The U.S. Department of Labor is aiming to rewrite or repeal more than 60 “obsolete” workplace regulations, ranging from minimum wage requirements for home health care workers and people with disabilities to standards governing exposure to harmful substances.If approved, the wide-ranging changes unveiled this month also would affect working conditions at constructions sites and in mines, and limit the government’s ability to penalize employers if workers are injured or killed while engaging in inherently risky activities such as movie stunts or animal training.The Labor Department says the goal is to reduce costly, burdensome rules imposed under previous administrations, and to deliver on President Donald Trump’s commitment to restore American prosperity through deregulation.“The Department of Labor is proud to lead the way by eliminating unnecessary regulations that stifle growth and limit opportunity,” Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement, which boasted the “most ambitious proposal to slash red tape of any department across the federal government.”Critics say the proposals would put workers at greater risk of harm, with women and members of minority groups bearing a disproportionate impact.“People are at very great risk of dying on the job already,” Rebecca Reindel, the AFL-CIO union’s occupational safety and health director, said. “This is something that is only going to make the problem worse.”The proposed changes have several stages to get through before they can take effect, including a public comment period for each one.Here’s a look at some of the rollbacks under consideration:
No minimum wage for home health care workers
Home health care workers help elderly or medically fragile people by preparing meals, administering medications, assisting with toilet use, accompanying clients to doctor appointments and performing other tasks. Under one of the Labor Department’s proposals, an estimated 3.7 million workers employed by home care agencies could be paid below the federal minimum wage currently $7.25 per hour and made ineligible for overtime pay if they aren’t covered by corresponding state laws.The proposed rule would reverse changes made in 2013 under former President Barack Obama and revert to a regulatory framework from 1975. The Labor Department says that by lowering labor and compliance costs, its revisions might expand the home care market and help keep frail individuals in their homes for longer.Judy Conti, director of government affairs at the National Employment Law Project, said her organization plans to work hard to defeat the proposal. Home health workers are subject to injuries from lifting clients, and “before those (2013) regulations, it was very common for home care workers to work 50, 60 and maybe even more hours a week, without getting any overtime pay,” Conti said.Others endorse the proposal, including the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative nonprofit based in Virginia. Women often bear the brunt of family caregiving responsibilities, so making home care more affordable would help women balance work and personal responsibilities, the group’s president, Carrie Lukas, said.“We’re pleased to see the Trump administration moving forward on rolling back some of what we saw as counterproductive micromanaging of relationships that were making it hard for people to get the care they need,” Lukas said.Samantha Sanders, director of government affairs and advocacy at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, said the repeal would not constitute a win for women.“Saying we actually don’t think they need those protections would be pretty devastating to a workforce that performs really essential work and is very heavily dominated by women, and women of color in particular,” Sanders said.
Protections for migrant farm workers
Last year, the Labor Department finalized rules that provided protections to migrant farmworkers who held H-2A visas. The current administration says most of those rules placed unnecessary and costly requirements on employers.Under the new proposal, the Labor Department would rescind a requirement for most employer-provided transportation to have seat belts for those agriculture workers.The department is also proposing to reverse a 2024 rule that protected migrant farmworkers from retaliation for activities such as filing a complaint, testifying or participating in an investigation, hearing or proceeding.“There’s a long history of retaliation against workers who speak up against abuses in farm work. And with H-2A it’s even worse because the employer can just not renew your visa,” said Lori Johnson, senior attorney at Farmworker Justice.Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, applauded the deregulation efforts, saying farmers were hit with thousands of pages of regulations pertaining to migrant farmworkers in recent years.“Can you imagine a farmer and his or her spouse trying to navigate 3,000 new pages of regulation in 18 months and then be liable for every one of them?” he asked.
Adequate lighting for construction spaces
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Labor Department, wants to rescind a requirement for employers to provide adequate lighting at construction sites, saying the regulation doesn’t substantially reduce a significant risk.OSHA said if employers fail to correct lighting deficiencies at construction worksites, the agency can issue citations under its “general duty clause.” The clause requires employers to provide a place of employment free from recognized hazards which are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.Worker advocates think getting rid of a specific construction site requirement is a bad idea. “There have been many fatalities where workers fall through a hole in the floor, where there’s not adequate lighting,” Reindel said. “It’s a very obvious thing that employers should address, but unfortunately it’s one of those things where we need a standard, and it’s violated all the time.”
Mine safety
Several proposals could impact safety procedures for mines. For example, employers have to submit plans for ventilation and preventing roof collapses in coal mines for review by the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration. Currently, MSHA district managers can require mine operators to take additional steps to improve those plans.The Labor Department wants to end that authority, saying the current regulations give the district manager the ability to draft and create laws without soliciting comments or action by Congress.Similarly, the department is proposing to strip district managers of their ability to require changes to mine health and safety training programs.
Limiting OSHA’s reach
The general duty clause allos OSHA to punish employers for unsafe working conditions when there’s no specific standard in place to cover a situation.An OSHA proposal would exclude the agency from applying the clause to prohibit, restrict or penalize employers for “inherently risky professional activities that are intrinsic to professional, athletic, or entertainment occupations.”A preliminary analysis identified athletes, actors, dancers, musicians, other entertainers and journalists as among the types of workers the limitation would apply to.“It is simply not plausible to assert that Congress, when passing the Occupational Safety and Health Act, silently intended to authorize the Department of Labor to eliminate familiar sports and entertainment practices, such as punt returns in the NFL, speeding in NASCAR, or the whale show at SeaWorld,” the proposed rule reads.Debbie Berkowitz, who served as OSHA chief of staff during the Obama administration, said she thinks limiting the agency’s enforcement authority would be a mistake.“Once you start taking that threat away, you could return to where they’ll throw safety to the wind, because there are other production pressures they have,” Berkowitz said.
Cathy Bussewitz. Associated Press
AstraZeneca plans to spend $50 billion to expand manufacturing and research capabilities in the U.S. by 2030, it said on Monday, the latest big investment by a pharmaceutical company reacting to President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.
The investment will fund a new drug manufacturing facility in Virginia and expand research and development (R&D) and cell therapy manufacturing in Maryland, Massachusetts, California, Indiana and Texas, it said in a statement.
It will also upgrade the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker’s U.S. clinical trial supply network and support ongoing investment in novel medicines.
On Monday, AstraZeneca said the expansion supports its ambition to reach $80 billion in annual revenue by 2030, with half coming from the U.S.
The U.S. accounted for more than 40% of AstraZeneca’s annual revenue in 2024, and the company had been prioritising the market the world’s largest, worth $635 billion before Trump’s return to office.
The move to scale up its U.S. footprint is the latest by a drugmaker as Trump threatens to impose import tariffs on the industry and seeks to boost domestic manufacturing. The sector has historically been spared from trade disputes.
Trump has called on pharma companies to make more of the medicines they sell in the U.S. within the country, rather than importing active ingredients or finished medicines. He is also pushing for prices in the U.S. to fall to what other countries pay.
CEO Pascal Soriot announced the plans in Washington, saying he believes that drug prices need to rise elsewhere and “equalize” with other countries effectively contributing more to research and development costs. “The United States cannot build or carry the cost of R&D for the entire world,” he said.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s department is leading a probe into pharmaceutical imports that could pave the way for new tariffs.
“For decades Americans have been reliant on foreign supply of key pharmaceutical products. President Trump and our nations new tariff policies are focused on ending this structural weakness,” said Lutnick in a statement issued by AstraZeneca.
While Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs on the sector, he signalled earlier this month that companies would be given a year to 18 months to “get their act together” before any levies take effect.
The company said that the timing and location of the announcement was linked to the U.S. policy environment, though some of the spending would have occurred regardless so that the infrastructure for future medicines was in place.
The pledge is in addition to the $3.5 billion in investments the company announced in November 2024, the statement said.
PLEDGES
The $50 billion pledge matches the commitment announced by Swiss rival Roche in April and follows new spending plans unveiled this year by Eli Lilly & Co, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Sanofi.
Also present at the announcement was Virginia State Governor Glenn Youngkin, a vocal Trump ally who has defended the administration’s tariff policies.
The new Virginia facility the company’s largest single manufacturing investment will produce active ingredients for AstraZeneca’s experimental weight-loss medicines, including its oral GLP-1 candidate and an oral PCSK9 inhibitor for cholesterol management, it said.
The company said the investment could create tens of thousands of new jobs, but declined to give specifics. It employs about 18,000 people in the U.S. and has a global workforce of about 90,000.
In January it scrapped plans to invest 450 million pounds ($607.1 million) in its vaccine manufacturing plant in northern England, citing a cut in government support.
Earlier this month, The Times reported the company was considering moving its stock market listing from London, where it is the exchange’s most valuable company worth 159 billion pounds, to the U.S. The company declined to comment.
($1 = 0.7415 pound)
Ahmed Aboulenein and Maggie Fick, Reuters
Figma is targeting a valuation of $16.4 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The collaborative design software makera rival to platforms like Adobeplans to sell around 37 million shares priced between $25 and $28 each, which would generate up to $1 billion in proceeds and give the company a valuation between $14.6 billion and $16.4 billion.
The targeted share price was disclosed in the companys updated S-1 statement, filed with the SEC on Monday.
Figma had previously entered an agreement with Adobe to be acquired in 2022, but regulators nixed that deal.
Its unclear when the listing will occur. A report from Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source, said shares are expected to be priced on July 30. Fast Company reached out to Figma for comment.
Figma’s stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker FIG. It first filed paperwork with its intent to go public earlier this month.
The companys filings show a positive trajectory that investors might find enticing.
Figma says it has 13 million active users, and that its products are used by 95% of the Fortune 500. Last year, it drove $749 million in revenue, an increase of 48% year-over-year, and its most recent quarterly sales numbers, for the first few months of 2025, were similarly up 46% year-over-year.
Figma’s forthcoming IPO follows several other tech-focused listings in recent months, including market debuts for Circle and Chime. Figma was named one of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies of 2025.
As President Donald Trump considers life after the White House when his term-limited time in office ends in 2029, might he follow the path set by one of his predecessors and make a post-presidency pivot to an art career?
Trump’s artistic skills are in the spotlight after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump allegedly contributed a suggestive drawing and lewd poem for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denied having anything to do with the page, but in his denial, he told an undisputable lie: “I never wrote a picture in my life,” he told The Journal.
Trump has, in fact, made many pictures in his life, and the description of the medium used to make the drawing reportedly sent to Epsteina heavy marker just so happens to be his medium of choice. Say what you will about the inconsistencies between his words, politics, and actions, but Trump has a consistent, distinctive artistic style.
[Screenshot: Heritage Auctions]
Trump created marker-made doodles showing recurring motifs of city skylines for charity auctions throughout the 2000s, when he hosted NBC’s The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. “It takes me a few minutes to draw something. In my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then I sign my name. But it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York through the Capuchin Food Pantries Ministry,” he wrote in his 2008 book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success.
[Photo: Paul Buck/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock]
Far from trompe l’oeil (French for “fools the eye”), a style in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail, one of Trump’s doodles of the Empire State Building is filled in with sharp black squiggles that resemble his own sharp, jagged signature, while a 2006 sketch of the George Washington Bridge stands apart from the rest and proves Trump has more artistic skill than he might let on. His sketch of the bridge shows a sense of depth and angles.
[Screenshot: Julien’s Auctions]
Viewed as a body of work, most of Trump’s sketches are rudimentary and his skylines blocky and simple (“Art may not be my strong point,” he admitted in Trump Never Give Up), but they share an aesthetic. And judging Trump’s work alongside the art of other presidentsfrom presidential doodles to former President George W. Bush’s post-presidency oil paintingsit’s clear that his style is singular.
“Its sort of surprising that Trumps doodles show a bit of artistic talent,” David Greenberg, a journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University and author of books including Presidential Doodles, tells Fast Company. “Id put him in maybe the top third of presidents in his doodling. Of course, its hard to say. Hes no Herbert Hoover, thats for sure.” The National Archives called Hoover “among Americas greatest doodling presidents.”
Is there a market for Trump to make a name for himself as an artist out of office? Still, like with a painting by, say, Khloe Kardashian, Trump’s doodles aren’t valuable for their artistic merit, but for the artist’s famous name. Trump’s Empire State Building drawing sold at auction for $100 in 1995 for a charity; by 2017, when he was president, it resold for $16,000. By this measure Trump’s potential value as an artist has never been higher. More famous than ever, Trump could do worse than an art career.
General Motors’ second-quarter core profit fell 32% to $3 billion on Tuesday, as the automaker continued to confront challenging tariff policies, which it said sapped $1.1 billion from the results.
The automaker’s revenue in the quarter ended June 30 fell nearly 2% to about $47 billion from a year ago. Its quarterly adjusted earnings per share fell to $2.53 compared with $3.06 a year earlier.
Analysts on average expected the company to notch a quarterly adjusted profit of $2.44 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG. Shares of the company fell about 3% in premarket trade.
The largest U.S. automaker by sales said it expects the tariff impact to worsen in the third quarter and stuck to a previous estimate that trade headwinds threaten to hit the bottom line by $4 billion to $5 billion. GM said it could take steps to mitigate at least 30% of that impact.
GM was among the many corporations to pull its annual guidance as it evaluated the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but eventually reinstated it to a lower annual adjusted core profit of between $10 billion and $12.5 billion. The company on Tuesday stood by that guidance.
Beyond tariffs, GMs underlying business in the quarter was solid. Sales in the U.S. market its main profit center rose 7%, while the company continued to command strong pricing on its pickup trucks and SUVs. GM swung back to a small profit in China, after losing money there a year earlier.
Nora Eckert and Nathan Gomes, Reuters
Last week, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE: TSM), also known as TSMC, crossed an important psychological threshold for investors. The Taiwanese company surpassed a $1 trillion market capitalization, making it the first Asian company to do so since Chinas PetroChina oil and gas giant briefly achieved this milestone in 2007, notes GuruFocus.
TSMC manufactures the most advanced computer chips in the world, which are essential for running the most complex AI tasks. The company makes chips for a variety of tech giants, including Nvidia and Apple.
As of the time of this writing, TSMC has a market capitalization of approximately $1.2 trillion. The chipmaking giant has achieved this 12-figure valuation on the strength of its chip business in recent months, which has seen a surge in demand thanks to the artificial intelligence boom sweeping the world.
But the question many people may be wondering now is whos next in line to join the $1 trillion club? Heres what the numbers say.
Who is currently in the $1 trillion club?
The list of companies valued at $1 trillion or more is pretty short. Currently, just 11 companies have a 12-figure valuation, according to data compiled by CompaniesMarketCap.com.
The companies with trillion-dollar market caps currently include:
Nvidia ($4.1 trillion)
Microsoft ($3.7 trillion)
Apple ($3.1 trillion)
Amazon ($2.4 trillion)
Alphabet/Google ($2.3 trillion)
Meta Platforms ($1.7 trillion)
Saudi Aramco ($1.6 trillion)
Broadcom ($1.3 trillion)
TSMC ($1.2 trillion)
Tesla ($1 trillion)
Berkshire Hathaway ($1 trillion)
While TSMC is the newest member of this esteemed list, the company that tops the chart, Nvidia, is the most notable. Not only is it the most valuable company in the world, but it is also the only company to have ever reached a $4 trillion market capitalization, which it achieved earlier this month.
What companies are closest to joining the trillion-dollar club?
As its fairly hard to predict how the stock marketand individual stockswill perform in the future, its also nearly impossible to say with any certainty which company may be the next one to cross the trillion-dollar threshold.
The companies that are the closest now could have calamity strike next week, and see their stock prices plunge as a result, taking them further from the 12-figure mark.
Alternatively, a company that is worth only a few hundred billion now could strike metaphorical business gold next week, and see its share price surge catapulting it to the trillion-dollar club out of nowhere.
But given that a companys market cap is defined by adding up the value of a companys total shares, its easy to see which companies are currently next closest in line to becoming a trillion-dollar giant. The following five companies that are closest based on their current stock prices are:
JPMorgan Chase (Market Cap $800 billion)
Walmart ($763 billion)
Visa ($685 billion)
Eli Lilly ($684 billion)
Oracle ($684 billion)
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase is the closest to a $1 trillion market cap. To reach it, it would only need to see its stock price rise by another 25% from current levels. Walmart would need to see its stock increase by about 31% from current levels. Visa, Eli Lilly, and Oracle would all need to see about a 46% jump in their stock prices to reach a $1 trillion market cap.
As for some of Americas other tech giants, many would need to see their stock prices nearly double or triple from todays levels to reach a $1 trillion valuation. These companies include: Netflix (current valuation: $524 billion), SAP (current valuation: $358 billion), and Palantir (current valuation: $358 billion).
For now, its unlikely that any of these companies will be hitting the $1 trillion threshold in the near future, which is precisely why TSMC joining the club is such a big deal. Even as the value of many of the worlds largest companies continues to surge, crossing the 12-figure mark is still a relative rarity.
Summer vacation season is here, but it may be the last time Americans can travel affordably by planeespecially if Delta has its way.
As the worlds largest airline by annual revenue and the second-largest by passengers carried, Delta is a leader in the industry. Thats what makes its plans to use AI for ticket pricing so concerning.
According to Delta President Glen Hauenstein, about one in five tickets the airline sells by years end will be priced by AI, up from just 3% today. Deltas long-term goal is to price all tickets this way. This is a full reengineering of how we price and how we will be pricing in the future, Hauenstein told investors in November 2024. While this may spell amazingly favorable unit revenues for the airline, its bad news for passengersmany of whom worry that price gouging will soon eclipse any notion of price personalization.
The practice of dynamic pricing is certainly not new in the airline industry, says Kerry Tan, professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland. But with better data and evolving tech, he says, the increase in the usage of AI to price their flights raises important questions. Certainly Delta, as with any other company, is profit-driven, and stands to gain from this by better matching consumers willingness to pay to the price they pay for a flight.
The fear is that Deltas size and influence will prompt othersboth airlines and companies in unrelated sectorsto follow suit.
As an economist, we assume that companies are profit maximizers, and so in a way I see this as companies really making a push towards that objective of profit maximization, Tan says. But it also highlights how firms are increasingly willing to squeeze consumers for every penny. Thats why companies like Disney can implement variable pricing for perks like Lightning Lane passes, or why Las Vegas casinos continue to raise resort fees.
Post-pandemic, the consumer environment has grown more hostile, from ubiquitous tipping prompts to ever-higher surcharges. Tan points to sports franchises pricing tickets dynamically depending on the quality of their opponentfor instance, Manchester United charging more when facing rivals like Liverpool than lesser-known teams like Everton.
And its not just flights or football. I think certainly where possible companies are going to try to employ AI, Tan says. While grocery pricing might seem less vulnerable, he notes early signs of change. Some European chains already use digital shelf tags that update in real timelowering prices to reduce food waste but potentially able to raise them when demand spikes or a tracked customer walks in. Still, he adds, AI pricing makes more economic sense for big-ticket items like airfare than everyday goods like milk.
Tim Quigley, a management professor at the University of Georgia, agrees, and sees how easily this kind of technology could spread. If they know theres an ad and a bunch of people in a city searching for a piece of hardware at Best Buy, maybe the price goes up, he says. Its those sorts of things AI can do without human intervention.
Hotels may be next. What youre willing to pay to stay at a Marriott or a Hilton or some other hotel could be vastly different than my willingness to pay, Tan says. And if they can tap into that difference and charge you closer to what your willingness to pay is, theyre going to extract a lot more profits.
Quigley warns this trend could lead to a miserable existence for consumers. This creeps in further into our lives with us being silent about it, he says. So I appreciate you reaching out and other journalists that have written about this issue and getting it to the forefront.
For Quigley, the solution starts with protecting personal data. Companies are using this data in ways that you and I could have never imagined, he says. Maybe we ought to put some basic protections in place to say the customer, the individual[we] own our data.
Years ago, I spent a lot of time making the case for why IT mattered in large enterprises. Its fair to say the landscape has changeddramatically.
Where I once had to argue for ITs strategic importance, I now find myself doing the oppositepushing back on the exuberant view that technology alone can fix everything from poorly designed processes to unclear roles and responsibilities.
After decades of serving as essentialbut often backgroundenablers of enterprise strategy, technologists and our alphabet soup of leadership titles (CIOs, CDTOs, CDOs, CTOs) are now at the center of business transformation. In more than 30 years in this industry, I’ve never witnessed IT play such a central role in shaping business dynamics. With the tailwind of generative AI and automated code completion, technology teams are now leading what can only be described as “business as unusual”creating previously unimaginable products, services, business models, customer and partner relationships, and employee experiences. Today, tech strategy is business strategy.
The Great Unbundling Begins
The traditional way we think about enterprise software is being upended. Suddenly, it’s both cool and affordable to build genuinely useful things. For decades, CIOs were forced to manage constant trade-offs: lower total cost of ownership versus future-proofing, slick user interfaces versus seamless integration, best-of-breed solutions versus end-to-end platforms, on-premises versus cloud. The market subsequently converged to the point where most companies now run virtually identical application stacks.
And yet, despite spending tens of millions on carefully crafted user interfaces, most employees still dislike using the enterprise software we provide. They use it because they must, not because they want to.
At their core, most enterprise software platforms arent so different from the Excel spreadsheets my brother uses to run his small businessthey just come with multimillion-dollar interfaces layered on top. Whether its HR systems, data platforms, or CRMs, the underlying logic often mirrors the same basic workflows and decision trees. What sets them apart isnt complexityits scale, integration capability, and the stakes involved.
To put it more bluntly, all of us are spending enormous sums on the equivalent of a car that boasts luxury exterior finishes but moves you along with the horsepower of a Yugo GV. Regardless of how nice the outside looks, the engine is what actually delivers impact and value.
The AI-Powered Reconstruction
The emergence of agentic AI is fundamentally disrupting how we evaluate enterprise software as an industry. With novel AI frameworks like Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (ATA) protocols, we’re starting to see a future where user interfaces can be disaggregated from the underlying data itself. If AI-based tool calling delivers on its promise, theres no reason someone shouldnt be able to change an address, retrieve a paystub, modify a customer order, reset a password, or increase a purchase orderall from the same pane of glass or GenAI prompt bar.
The ability to design this unified interface finally enables meaningful IT differentiation among companies. Until now, enterprise customers had no choice but to purchase software for virtually everything because developing and maintaining applications with exceptional UI, robust databases, and enterprise-grade security was prohibitively costly. With AI, the economics have shifted dramaticallythe cost of building something uniquely tailored to our business is plummeting as software learns to write, maintain, and improve itself.
In my field, every pharmaceutical company has historically relied on the same suite of enterprise applications, making differentiation nearly impossible. This raises a fundamental question, especially at this moment of accelerating AI innovation: Should we continue purchasing the costly applications everyone else uses, or should we start building solutions that give us an edge?
AI First
By adopting an AI-first approach, my company has developed an enterprise software catalog that outperformsand costs less thananything available for purchase, solving the age-old challenge of data discovery across our corporate systems.
Throughout our organization, even in processes far removed from laboratory work, we’re starting to see how bespoke tools without traditional user interfaces can execute tasks in seconds that previously required 30+ minutes across multiple systems, accelerating how we discover and develop lifesaving medicines.
I’m not suggesting companies should build custom ERP systems or replace every piece of software. Rather, AI and agentic frameworks give us the freedom to assess where real value is being createdwhich is typically closer to the end user. We can now selectively build applications that directly improve our competitive advantage while continuing to rely on proven solutions for core operational functions.
The Tech Is Changing, and So Is the Talent
With this newfound ability to build transformative solutions, the domain of configuring software, while still crucial, remains a necessary but insufficient skill set. The way we think about talent is fundamentally changing.
By becoming more comfortable building technologynot just buying or configuring itmy organization has doubled in size while significantly reducing its cost to the company. We’re still hungry for more people with the right skills. Fortunately, were seeing the next generation of undergraduate and graduate programs blend AI, computer and life sciences, and computational drug discovery and development. The twin torrent of advances in AI and biomedicine is creating rewarding career paths for emerging tech talentoffering purpose, future-shaping potential, and the opportunity to make a uniquely human impact.
Its a uniquely exciting time to be a technologist in life sciences. In five years, the work we do to benefit patientsthe applications and software we create to speed the discovery and delivery of new medicineswill be almost unrecognizable. While change at this pace brings inevitable turbulence, it also expands the role of tech leaders from enablers to architects of enterprise strategy.
The opportunity isnt just to keep upits to help shape what comes next.
For more than a century, the U.S. government has tried to bring more transparency to food labels. It started in 1906, when the Pure Food and Drug Act cracked down on mislabeled ingredients and false health claims. Since then, regulators have required more disclosurescalories, trans fats, added sugarsall in the name of public health. But if the goal was to change how Americans eat, the results remain hard to swallow.
Today, nutrition labels are more accurate and comprehensive than ever, yet 74% of adults in the U.S. are still overweight.
There are many reasons for this discrepancyhighly processed foods are addictive; healthy options are often more expensive. Some have argued that nutrition labels are “a wasteful distraction in the fight against obesity.” But many studies have shown that nutrition labels have their own role to play in nudging consumers to make healthier decisionswith two very big caveats. One: You must care enough to turn over the packaging and study the nutrition info box on the back. Two: You must know enough about nutrition to interpret what’s written in that box.
[Photo: Good Food Collective]
The Good Food Collective, launching today, wants to tackle both problems at once. The mission of this coalition of more than 25 food brands, organizations, and nutrition experts is to advocate for greater transparency in the food industry. Its first goal is to push for a front-of-package nutrition label thats visible at a glance and easy to understand and interpretqualities that can benefit both consumers and food manufacturers. It could change how Americans consume food, and it could change the way companies produce it, too.
Unlike nutrition labels on the back of packaging, a front-of-package label can catch consumers attention during that split-second decision-making moment in the store. The coalition’s design, by branding agency Interact, highlights when a product is high in added sugars, sodium, and saturated fats. It comes with a QR code framed inside a magnifying glass thats designed to educate people about nutrition, whether at the supermarket or back home. “We’re all working on the same problem, which is undoing years of irresponsible food marketing,” says founding member and GoodPop CEO Daniel Goetz.
[Image: courtesy Good Food Collective]
The FDA seal of approval
The Good Food Collective isn’t operating in a vacuum. On January 14 of this yearjust six days before Donald Trump took officethe Food and Drug Administration proposed requiring a front-of-package (FOP) nutrition label for most packaged foods. By then, the FDA had designed three versions: a simple, text-based label; a traffic light-style, color-coded label; and a black-and-white percent Daily Value label. After surveying 10,000 Americans, the agency found that the latter performed best in helping consumers identify healthier food options. The design was then put to a wider test as part of a public comment period that closed just last week, on July 15.
Judging from the docket, the FDA received close to 12,000 comments. Some food manufacturers stated their concern that a label would incur financial costs related to redesigning and repackaging. Others noted that percent daily values like “low” or “high” could be misunderstood without contextual education. The Good Food Collective submitted its design as part of the comment as well.
The FDA has yet to review all the comments, but a lot has changed under the Trump administration. In his capacity as secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired 3,500 employees at the FDA, or 20% of its workforce (the FDA did not respond to a request for comment). The Consumer Brands Association (whose members include General Mills, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, and others) sponsored a study pushing back against front-of-package label efficacy. And Trump introduced a regulatory freeze thats put many pending rulesincluding the FOP labelon hold.
If the FDA chooses to go ahead with the proposal, it will publish a final rule in the Federal Register. At that point, manufacturers would have three years to add the new labels, while smaller food manufacturers would have four years.
Nutrition labels around the world
If the FDA decides to implement a front-of-package label, it would follow in the footsteps of about 40 other countries. Some labeling, like in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K., is voluntary. In Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, its mandatory. Canada is in the process of implementing front-of-package labels by 2026 for products containing high sodium, sugar, and saturated fat. Singapore is due to extend its label from beverages to foods in 2027. Japan is currently piloting a front-of-package system.
Multiple review and real-world trials have shown that front-of-package labels have improved customers’ understanding of nutritional quality and, in the case of New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Chile, even prompted manufacturers to reformulate products. After Chiles Food Labeling and Advertising law went into effect, the percentage of products qualifying for a high-in-sugar label fell from 80% to 60%, while high-sodium products dropped from 74% to 27%.
It’s important to note that labels are more likely to succeed if they are accompanied by widespread consumer education campaigns to help the public understand how to interpret the labels. The look of the labels matters, too. Simple designs like traffic lights (U.K.), star ratings (Australia and New Zealand), or clear warning symbols (Mexico) have proven more effective than complex or purely numerical labels.
[Photo: courtesy Good Food Collective]
Designing a front-of-package label
The label that GFC is proposing is a direct response to the one proposed by the FDA. At first glance, it doesn’t even look that different. Like the FDA’s version, its black and white and mostly laid out in the same waya wise move that piggybacks on the agencys research.
But there are some key differences, the biggest being the way information is presented. The FDA’s version gives a breakdown of all key nutrients and whether they are high, low, or medium. The GFC label highlights only nutrients that qualify as high in content.
One of the comments submitted to the FDA, by the National Milk Producers Federation, objected to the proposal for a front-of-package label, stating it provides an incomplete assessment of a foods nutritional profile by focusing only on the bad. But members of the Good Food Collective argue that positives like “organic” or “high in protein” tend to cloud people’s judgment. For example, a product may be high in protein but also high in saturated fat. By focusing on high in nutrients, the GFC label makes it harder to avoid the mountain of fat or sodium lurking in that ingredient list.
To further draw attention to the label, the Interact team added a visual nugget in the form of two widely recognizable symbols: the QR code and the magnifying glass. Dan Gladden, Interacts executive creative director, calls these “memory structures” because the average American is already familiar with them. The QR code is now ubiquitous. The magnifying glass is a clear invitation to find out more.
Interestingly, Interact took cues from the FDA and shied away from using colors in favor of a monochromatic design. According to Gladden, whenever people see a red label, as they do on a bag of crisps in the U.K. (what Americans call potato chips), their inner child might kick in and reach for what they cant have. “Americans like their freedom, and don’t like to be told what to do,” Gladden says.
Studies have shown that people browsing in a supermarket make a decision in as little as three to five seconds. A black-and-white graphic that calls out high in ingredients is easier to interpret than one that, for example, requires parsing out the meaning of a yellow symbol and what about that particular product makes it yellow.
[Photo: courtesy Good Food Collective]
Rising tides lift all boats
At the time of this writing, the Good Food Collective is a coalition of 26, including founding members GoodPop, LesserEvil, Quinn, and Interact, and brands that joined later, including Little Sesame, Dr. Praegers, Rudis Bakery, and Sweet Nothings.
All brands bill themselves as healthy, which of course could mean that a front-of-package label may translate into higher sales, but it’s hard to be cynical when the outcome could benefit consumers as well. In any case, Tanner Smith, director of retail sales at Little Sesame, isn’t convinced a front-of-package label will lead to increased revenue. “Hummus is a cleaner category anyway, he told me, referring to Little Sesames core offering. My mind goes to chips, where brands can put a lot of additives.
Tanner believes the GFC label, the QR code in particular, provides a huge opportunity to educate consumers on making better food choices. “People are more aware of ingredients so I really do hope it does have impact,” he says.
Caitlin Mack, VP of marketing at LesserEvil, is also hopeful it will help brands reformulate their ingredients. “Ultimately, if it’s so in your face, then you’re going to want to make sure it’s coming across as something that consumers are going to want to be consuming,” she says.
Whether or not the FDA takes the GFCs recommendation, the mere fact that the coalition exists brings a glimmer of hope for the food industry. Many of these brands have been working toward the same goal for yearsclean ingredients, honest marketingbut by banding together, they hope to prove that rising tides lift all boats. “What we’re trying to do is, for the first time, be food companies that actually want to see progress on behalf of consumers, says Goetz. That’s the spirit of the Good Food Collective.”
Adults with ADHD are 300% more likely to start their own business. That stat might surprise you. After all, ADHD is usually framed as a workplace liability, something to be managed or accommodated, at best. But look closer and a different story emerges.
This isnt about ADHDers being bad employees. Its about what happens when you take people with brains wired for innovation, energy, and creativity and put them in systems that reward compliance, not curiosity. Weve worked with hundreds of ADHD adults and leaders across industries, and again and again we see the same pattern. Many dont leave work because they cant cope. They leave because theyre ready to lead.
Why Traditional Workplaces Push ADHDers Out
Lets start with the obvious. Most workplaces are built around neurotypical brains. They rely on linear timelines, sustained attention, meetings that run on strict agendas, and policies over people. These structures tend to favour those who are wired to act based on importance: I do this task because it matters. ADHDers, by contrast, have interest-based nervous systems. We act when something grabs us.
This isnt a weakness. Its a different kind of wiring. But it means we often struggle to thrive in environments where were expected to push through boring tasks without stimulation, autonomy, or flexibility. Many of us end up masking our difficulties, overcompensating with perfectionism or people-pleasing. Eventually, we burn out.
Katie was diagnosed with ADHD in her 40s, after years of trying to hold it all together in a leadership role in education. She could never understand why tasks that seemed effortless to others felt impossible for her. Alex, by contrast, was one of the first children diagnosed with ADHD in the UK back in 1990. But even with a diagnosis, understanding how ADHD showed up in adult life, especially in professional contexts, took decades.
This mismatch between wiring and workplace is not just frustrating. Its deeply disempowering. Which is why so many ADHDers eventually create their own rules by starting their own businesses.
Why Entrepreneurship Works for ADHD Brains
ADHDers often thrive in fast-paced, high-stakes, creative environments. These are exactly the kinds of conditions that entrepreneurial life can offer. Starting your own business allows for flexibility, urgency, spontaneity, and passion-led problem solving. You get to build systems that work for your brain, rather than constantly struggling to fit into someone elses.
Many of the traits that get pathologized in school or corporate life, such as impulsivity, hyperfocus, risk tolerance, and non-linear thinking, are the same ones that make ADHDers natural entrepreneurs. Were often great at big-picture visioning, rapid ideation, crisis problem-solving, and building deep, values-led connections with clients or audiences.
Of course, entrepreneurship also comes with challenges. Executive function difficulties dont disappear just because you work for yourself. In fact, they can be magnified, especially without support. But when ADHDers have autonomy, interest, and the ability to outsource or collaborate around their weaker areas, the results can be extraordinary.
The Hidden Cost of Being Forced to Fit In
Many ADHDers dont wake up one day and decide to become entrepreneurs. Often, they escape into it. They leave workplaces where they were misunderstood, micromanaged, or made to feel broken. They start building something of their own not just out of ambition, but out of necessity.
Weve coached ADHDers who felt paralysed in open-plan offices, punished for needing movement breaks, or quietly passed over for promotion because they didnt look organized enough. Others left high-paying jobs after burnout, only to discover that once they were in charge of their environment, their disorder started to look a lot more like a strength.
For women and marginalized genders, this story is even more complex. ADHD has long been underdiagnosed in women, in part because it doesnt always show up in loud or disruptive ways. Many women internalize their struggles, masking them behind competence, caregiving, and overachievement, until something gives.
Entrepreneurship becomes a space not just of career growth, but of identity reclamation.
Rethinking Leadership, Neurodivergence, and Success
So what does all this mean for the future of work?
If organizations want to retain and empower neurodivergent talent, they need to rethink what leadership looks like. Its not just about offering accommodations. Its about redesigning systems with flexibility, autonomy, and human-centred thinking baked in. Its about recognizing that some of your most innovative thinkers may not look professional in the conventional sense but are already solving tomorrows problems today.
And if youre an ADHDer reading this, wondering if theres something wrong with you because the nine-to-five grind just doesnt fit, maybe the problem isnt you. Maybe your brain was never meant to sit quietly in someone elses system. Maybe youre here to build your own.
Thats the core message of our book ADHDNow What? Not to try harder or mask better, but to understand your own brain wiring through ADHD coaching and lead from it. Whether thats in business, parenting, or life, ADHD coaching isnt about fixing you. Its about helping you do you, on purpose.
