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Following the Trump administrations cuts to foreign aid, two-thirds of Mercy Corps U.S.-funded programs have been rescinded. CEO Tjada DOyen McKenna shares how shes leading her team amid immense pressurescrambling to find new ways to help those in need, even as she resorts to layoffs to keep the business afloat. McKenna reveals what shes hearing from her team of aid workers on the ground in Gaza, and why she isnt running away from burnout but embracing it. Like many business leaders experiencing political or economic volatility right now, McKenna is faced with a complex conundrum: fight, flight, or freeze. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. U.S. government funding accounted for half of your funding, right? Exactly. About two thirds of your programs were rescinded. I mean, it’s like an existential crisis, a true existential crisis for the organization. So what did you do? I mean, you faced a slew of urgent decisions. They were urgent decisions, and I have to say it was very clumsy, right? Usually when you work with the government, there are definitions for every single thing, so very specific definition for stop or very specific definition for freeze. And in this case, the guidance wasn’t there. When they said we had to stop doing everything, our first concern was safety for people. If I have people in a remote area of a country or in charge of delivering food to a school feeding program next day, that community didn’t understand that we weren’t showing up the next day, and they certainly didn’t understand it was because the U.S. government told us not to, but we had to go to work. Once it was clear what was going to be cut or what wasn’t going to be cut, we had to go about shutting down those programs across 40 different countries, lots of different labor laws to that. We consolidated some of our regions, we closed some country offices. We just got to work to say, “If the funding wasn’t there for that program, we’ll shut it down in the most responsible way possible and we’ll keep moving and then address what we have to do with the U.S. government to see what we can preserve, make sure our other funders are okay, and still be prepared in case if another hurricane or earthquake had hit during that period, we still had to be prepared to respond.” I mean, the irony is your organization is all about responding to crisis when it emerges and now the crisis becomes you. And in some ways in some of these communities you’re sort of creating the crisis because they’ve become used to having you there. Yes, yes, yes. And I worried a lot about staff safety, particularly in remote places where we were a source of survival for people where we provided access to food, and that continued to plague me. We’d hear reports from colleagues of government officials trying to stop their country director to make sure everyone got paid before they left. And my staff in Sudan, almost all of them are displaced from their homes themselves. So they’re working for us in temporary shelters, still going through the same problems that everyone else is going through. And so this was a weird situation where our organization was the one that had to be the emergency patient, but we also knew . . . You almost felt guilty for feeling bad because people have it so much worse than you do. There were a lot of weird mental gymnastics that were happening for all of us. We’re now months in, past that initial shock. How much do you look at 2025 today as an inflection point, sort of a new normal for USAID orgs like Mercy Corps? Are you kind of holding your breath in a way in hopes that, “A next administration maybe will reinstate things?” No, we know nothing’s going back to the way it was, but we don’t know exactly what that looks like going forward. The other thing that was surreal is there was this demonization of aid or demonization of aid agencies. A lot of misinformation about the work we were doing and how we were doing it. And then theres the third and fourth effect. So in a lot of places, we rely on UN airplanes to get in and out of certain areas, and so a lot of UN organizations we’re also facing the same U.S. cuts that we were. So we are still digging out of the aftermath. We know the world is fundamentally changed, and right now we are trying to embrace that and move into the future while also knowing the future’s still quite uncertain. I have to ask you about Gaza. There are all the reports about famine in Gaza where you’ve had teams on the ground. Your Mideast director was on this show in October of 2023 soon after Hamas’s October 7th attack as the initial Israeli military action was underway. Are your teams still active on the ground there now? What are they seeing and what might our listeners be missing in the news reports that they’re getting? We have about 35 staff that are still on the ground living and working in Gaza. We’ve had about 1,300 trucks stuck at a border that have not been able to get in. We’ve had some food in those trucks expire in that time period. And even without those trucks, our teams on the ground we’re working with water desalination plants and supplying clean water to people. It’s so dire right now. Our own team members are hungry. They are worried about where their next meal is coming from. We have a staff member that is able to go in and out, and she talks about the weight loss that she’s seen in her colleagues. About a million people are under evacuation orders in Gaza City. A lot of them, this is the fourth, fifth time they’ve moved. And what’s different lately, which really concerns us, is that sense of hope is really eroded. I think people feel like they’ve been just left. This is as tough as it’s ever been, and our own staff are fighting for their own survival. We talk about the lack of food, but 95% of households there just don’t have enough water. And so someone said, “A choice you’re making every day is, do I wash my hands? Do I drink a glass of water? Do I bathe the kids? The little water I have, what do I do with it?” And we just can’t imagine. It’s just been horrific and to feel so powerless, especially when we know there are trucks waiting across the border that could get in. There are people like us that are really eager to do the work, like my staff who are looking for food themselves, who want to get out and do things, and we just know it’s political will that’s stopping that. I spoke to another humanitarian aid leader recently off the record, who shared that starting years ago, they chose not to provide services in Gaza because they were worried and believed that Hama would inevitably infiltrate their efforts. And obviously this is what the Israeli government or military at least is kind of saying, did you have worries about that? Does that matter when you’re trying to just feed people? Gaza has always been one of the most difficult places in the world to work. I mean, we all are under U.S. anti-terrorism laws. Our staff are vetted. We check the names, we check the lists because the risk of having a staff member be a part of Hamas is too great to bear. We have not seen mass aid diversion from Hamas. That just has not been our experience, and most of our colleagues have not experienced that either. So that has been talked about as a threat. You do see looting, you do see hungry people, crowds of hungry people swarming to every truck and you see children and people throwing themselves in front of trucks. The way to address people stealing aid or making food valuable is to flood the zone with food, and then it’s not as valuable. I think more importantly, there have been anonymous Israeli defense forces in COGAT, which is the border authority officials saying that they’ve seen no mass aid diversion. U.S. government reports, internal former USAID audit reports said they have no evidence of mass diversion of aid. So we work in difficult environments and we all take vetting very seriously, but we know how to do this. We know how to work in these environments.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its Sunday night. Before kids, this was the time to nurse a mimosa hangover and zone out to The Sopranos. Now? Its a very different playbook. Sunday evenings feel less like a gentle exhale from the weekend and more like staging a Broadway play with a cast that hasnt rehearsed and refuses to put on pants. You are simultaneously the chef, chauffeur, hairdresser, homework coach, and emotional support animal. For parents, the Sunday Scaries dont whisper your inbox is waiting. They shout: Did you wash the soccer uniform? Are there enough snacks for afterschool? Is the social studies project due tomorrow or Wednesday? Ugh! Did I RSVP for that birthday party? The stress creeps up way before the Monday morning alarm. Workweek Ericka already has 15 Google Meets scheduled, but Mom Ericka must also make sure small humans leave the house with a full water bottle, completed homework, and hair appears combed. And unlike our carefree twenties, we cant just order Pad Thai at 10 p.m. and call it dinner for two days. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} The case for Sunday systems Heres the encouraging news: you dont have to live in perpetual scramble mode. Research consistently shows that people who plan and structure their weeks report lower stress and greater well-being. Weekly planning reduces rumination. In a field experiment, people who sketched out their week in advance reported fewer 2 a.m. spirals about forgotten tasks and felt more engaged during the day. Routines stabilize mental health. Psychologists link chaotic home routines to worse parental well-being, especially during school transitions. Planning boosts control. Other studies show that planning is correlated with a greater sense of progress and competencethe feeling that youre steering the ship instead of clinging to the side in rough seas. Of course, lets be clear: folding laundry does not spark joy. Its possible that people who are naturally calmer are also more inclined to plan. But the evidence leans in a direction every parent instinctively knows: structure is sanity. How to survive (without spiraling) The trick isnt to banish the Sunday Scariesyou wont, unless you invent a time machine or outsource your children. The goal is to outmaneuver them with rituals that make Monday feel less like an ambush. Hold a Family Staff MeetingYes, it sounds corporate but it works. Ten minutes where everyone lays out the week: who needs poster board, who has soccer practice, whos on snack duty. Cookies as bribes are encouraged. Do Laundry Like Its GospelUniforms, tights, hoodies, and beloved blankies must be washed and folded by 7 p.m. Otherwise, youll discover the only clean option is a Halloween cape on Wednesday morning. Play Fridge TetrisStock the fridge like a level of Tetris: cheese sticks where you can grab them, sandwich fixings prepped, carrots visible so you can feel virtuous (even if no one eats them). With a system in place, you can turn Sunday night from a slow-motion panic spiral into something approaching serenity. Because Monday morning will still bring tears over the wrong-colored water bottle, but if the bags are packed, the laundry is folded, and the fridge is stocked, you will survive with a little more calm, and maybe even brushed hair. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
I was one of the millions of people who lost someone to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the nonstop news about the new normal, my grief felt invisible. I took shallow solace in my phone and turned to social media to numb me from the reality that I now lived in: a world without my dad. One day, while mindlessly scrolling, I came across the r/Squishmallow subreddit, where a girl had posted her collection of more than 100 round plush toys. They were called Squishmallowsround stuffed animals invented in 2017 that have become one of the most popular toy lines in the world, with more than 100 million sold each year. I was hypnotized. I expected that my dive into the Squishmallow phenomenon would be the usual two-hour rabbit hole, but spending time in that community was the first joy Id felt in months. After scrolling through endless photos of Squishmallow hauls, I worked up the courage to post. I asked if there was a cardinal Squishmallow, since that bird was my dads symbol for his own father. I was bombarded with compassion; even though cardinal Squishmallows were rare at the time, someone sent me theirs for free. That single act of generosity started my collection. Stumbling into the Squishmallow world But alongside kindness and joy, I encountered a darker side of the community: resellers. Finding the most coveted Squishmallows could turn into a fierce competition. This wasnt just my personal frustration. As a doctoral candidate in marketing, I wanted to understand how communities like this function when outsiders exploit their passion for profit. That became the focus of my dissertationthe first study to examine resellers psychological and emotional impact on brand communities. That researchwhich my colleagues and I published in one of the fields top journalsechoed what I had lived through as a collector: Resellers are one of the most consistent sources of pain for members of brand communities. A Squishmallow reseller discusses his technique. For example, when I heard that my local Hot Topic would be selling two Reshmas, the coveted strawberry cow Squishmallow, I, like any rational adult, found myself outside of a mall at 6:30 in the morning. When the doors finally opened at 11 a.m., I sprinted to the storefrontonly to find that I had been beaten by some people who had dressed as mall employees to sneak in early. I left devastated and cowless. Later that day, I saw the same people gloating in local Squishmallow Facebook groups, trying to resell the cow for more than 10 times the retail price. I was heartbroken and angry; I swore Id never collect again. And I wasnt the only one to feel that way: Across social media, youll find countless collectors venting about resellers. What is a brand community? I didnt know it then, but I had joined my first brand community: a group of consumers who form strong, meaningful connections through their shared admiration of a product. Brand communities range from giant online hubs with more than 100,000 members to tiny local groups that host trading parties in empty lots. You might be in a brand community without realizing it. These communities can be created by a companylike Harley-Davidson, Lego, and Hot Wheelsor emerge organically from fans, like the Facebook group Walt Disney World Tips and Tricks. And they arent just about buying and selling. Theyre creative ecosystems, full of posts showing collections, inventive displays, and even goodbye messages when someone rehomes an item to another loving collector. Community members help each other solve problems, share leads on hard-to-find items, and sometimes even mail strangers a plush toy because they know it will make them smile. But while collectors use these communities to exchange information, so do resellers. The reseller paradox: A shared enemy can unite a community Resellers are outsiders who buy the most sought-after items and flip them online for a profit. They scout inventory tips, track hot products, and plan their shelf-clearing strategies accordingly. And they infuriate collectors like me. Nothing sours the thrill of the hunt faster than seeing a shelf cleared by someone who only wants to use your sacred collectibles for profit. After feeling emotional pain myself, I wanted to understand why resellers bothered me so much, and what they meant for the communities that had become my lifeline. That frustration became the spark for my research. What I found surprised me. As a collector, nothing frustrates me more than to say: According to my research, resellers paradoxically strengthen brand communities. Yes, you read that right. Resellers help communities, but not because they try to help members acquire their desired items. In fact, my findings indicate that resellers inflict heartbreak on community memberswhich was in line with what I saw and experienced. Resellers help brand communities because they create a common enemy that the community can rally against. When resellers grab all the stock from a store shelf, collectors turn to each other. They vent. They strategize. They share tips on where to find certain items, offer to pick up extras for strangers, and organize trades to help each other avoid inflated resale prices. Ironically, the people causing the most frustration also increase community engagement. Brand communities are real communities These communities reminded me that you are never truly alone in our darkest moments. Joining a niche community, whether for sneakers, trading cards, cars or even Squishmallows, can enrich your life far beyond the products themselves. It wasnt the Squishmallows that helped me heal from loss; it was the connection that lived in threads, comments, and group chats. I even came to appreciate the villains of the communityresellersfor their role in bringing people together. Although I still think I deserve that strawberry cow more than they did. Danielle Hass is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Marketing at West Virginia University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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