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For most of my career, I looked around the room and saw male C-suite leaders. This was especially true in healthcare, even across companies that largely serve women. I came to realize that the industry didnt have the CEO I was searching for. I was looking for a female leader who understood both the business and the experience of the patients that they served. At that moment, I decided that I would take on that role myself. In 2023, with just two days notice, I transitioned into the CEO role after more than 20 years in brand and marketing leadership across Fortune 500 companies, disruptor brands, and consumer health startups. Those experiences taught me that leadership doesnt have to follow a blueprint. When the traditional approach isnt serving the people you are trying to reach, you have to build a new path forward. Stepping into the CEO role wasnt just a career pivot, but a necessary step to redesign the kind of workplace and company culture I wanted to be a part of. From leading with empathy to making space for womens lived experiences in the boardroom, Ive learned what it takes to reimagine leadership in industries that have historically underrepresented and undervalued womenboth as leaders and consumers. The leadership gap in womens health Female leadership is still the exception in healthcare, even in sectors that focus on womens health. Though women make up a majority of the healthcare workforce, their representation in executive positions remains strikingly low. The healthcare industry lags in diversifying leadership; only 15% of health system CEOs are women. To be clear, Im not advocating removing men from their roles as CEO. Diversifying the industry and creating truly balanced leadership teams, however, is critical. Doing this allows the industry to reflect the populations it serves. Companies also benefit from having more women in leadership. Research by McKinsey shows that company profits and employee performance were up to 50% higher at workplaces where women are well-represented. Boardrooms also benefit when leaders bring both strategic expertise and an understanding of the audience they serve, whether its patients, consumers, or employees. Women aiming to break into those spaces need to be more than just a business leader; they need to be a culture-shifter. Demonstrating this link earns credibility with peers and ultimately, the top role in a space that men have historically held. Going from CMO to CEO overnight My journey to CEO was anything but ordinary. Healthcare CEOs often come from finance, operations, or medicine backgrounds, not marketing. That made my path unconventional, but it also gave me a unique lens. My marketing background trained me to listen closely to patients, understand their needs, and translate them into solutions that feel approachable. As CMO, that perspective helped us grow by meeting women where they were, whether that was through streaming audio, influencer partnerships, or out-of-home campaigns that sparked everyday conversations. What mattered wasnt the channel itself, but the trust we built and the stigma we helped dismantle. That same mindset guides me as CEO. Instead of chasing every new trend, we made a conscious decision to strengthen our community through consistent content, meaningful dialogue, and programs that support women across life stages. Of course, growth is important, but only if it creates a company that feels like a true partner in womens health. For other women eyeing leadership transitions, know that it is possible. And dont underestimate the skills youve already perfected, whether thats in marketing, operations, or another field. All of those capabilities, and more, can form the foundation of effective, authentic leadership. Reimagining workplace culture Building brands that reflect the needs of their customers starts with who is in the C-suite. Companies that elect leaders who understand the lived experiences of those they serve can provide solutions that are more personal, impactful, and accessible. This is especially the case when it comes to womens health. Its also important to extend the same mindset internally. This is whats going to allow workplace culture to be inclusive and supportive, where every team member feels valued and motivated by the companys shared mission. For example, if you position yourself as an industry leader in a specific area (i.e., social responsibility), your benefits package should align with that mission. If you stand for abortion rights, benefits like PTO following an abortion (and travel expenses for employees who live in states with restrictive reproductive rights) should be the norm in your organization. The future of work isnt just about remote or hybrid models; its about inclusivity. If companies want to continue to remain relevant and thrive, they need to mirror the increasingly diverse workforces and customer base. That means creating opportunities for women and other underrepresented groups to lead, not just participate. Inclusive leadership trickles down to create stronger teams that are more effective, efficient, and have higher morale. The more perspectives we bring into the decision-making process, the more capable we are of creating solutions that meet real needs, especially for women and underserved populations.
Category:
E-Commerce
The modern city is a paradox. Designed to bring people together, it increasingly keeps us apart, stranded in traffic, saddled with debt, and choked by air pollution. The root cause isnt a mystery. We built our cities around cars, not people. This design wasnt accidental. It was the result of a century-long entanglement between public infrastructure and private interests, what we call the car-industrial complex. Cars were sold to Americans as symbols of freedom and progress. In reality, they’ve become financial traps, consuming vast portions of household budgets while gutting public space and mobility options for everyone. Car-centric planning has hollowed out our cities. Zoning regulations, freeways, and cheap fuel gave rise to sprawling suburbs and isolated communities, dependent on personal vehicles for even the most basic tasks. Its a system that punishes the poor, marginalizes the elderly and disabled, and makes public life thinner and more precarious. The car promised freedom, and delivered debt, pollution, and dependence. Meanwhile, local governments, seduced by auto industry lobbying and federal subsidies, doubled down on road-building and car-friendly development. The result is a vicious cycle: more cars mean more roads; more roads mean more sprawl; more sprawl means more cars. And all of it costs taxpayers dearly. Cities are now stuck maintaining bloated road networks while struggling to fund basic services like public transit, schools, and housing. Reallocating space So how do we begin to reverse this? First, we must redesign our cities around people, not cars. This begins with reallocating space. Cars are the most spatially inefficient form of transport ever invented. They sit idle 95% of the time, yet take up 50% or more of urban space in some cities. The solution? Reduce car lanes. Convert parking lots into housing, green space, or local commerce. Make streets walkable and bikeable by default, not as an afterthought. This can be done and is already being done in cities from Barcelona to Bogota. Second, we need to invest in public transit, not just as a social good, but as core infrastructure for economic resilience. This means buses, trains, but also microtransit, demand-responsive services, and protected cycling infrastructure. Public mobility must be convenient, affordable, and desirable. A truly resilient city isnt one where everyone can afford a car, its one where nobody has to have one one to thrive. Third, housing and mobility must be planned together. For decades, we built homes far from jobs, schools, and groceries, and then told people to drive. Inverting that logic is essential. Cities should incentivize mixed-use, infill development and eliminate minimum parking requirements that bake car dependency into every building project. Fourth, we must confront the car-industrial complex at its core: finance. Car debt in the U.S. now totals more than $1.6 trillion. Thats more than all outstanding student loan debt. Eighty percent of new cars and 35% of used cars are purchased with loans, many predatory, high-interest, and longer than the expected life of the vehicle. This isn’t mobility, its a form of economic capture. Governments cant fix this by tinkering at the edges. Subsidizing electric cars or building a few charging stations wont solve the deeper problem: the financial architecture of car dependency. We need policies that actively disincentivize car ownership and use, congestion pricing, car-free zones, and removing subsidies that make driving artificially cheap. At the same time, we must support families through affordable alternatives, dense, walkable neighborhoods, better public schools, and reliable transit. Fifth, we must reimagine how we measure success. For decades, traffic engineers and city planners envisaged good planning in terms of how fast and efficiently traffic could flow. We need to shift that metric toward human flourishing and what makes a city liveable in the 21st century. Is it safe to walk your child to school? Can a teenager get to a job without a car? Are parks and clinics accessible without driving? If not, the system is failing. Not a dream Reversing car-centric design is not a utopian dream. Cities around the world are already doing it. Paris is removing 70,000 parking spaces to make room for bikes and trees. Barcelona is expanding its network of superblocks that prioritize pedestrians and eliminate through-traffic. Oslo removed cars entirely from its city center and saw foot traffic, and local business, surge. Cities in the Global South are pioneering new forms of green micormobility, such as Jakarta where the government has set a target of electrifying 2.1 million motor cyles by the end of 2025 These changes we need in cities arent just about mobility. Theyre about public health, economic equity, and climate resilience. Theyre about repairing the social fabric that cars have slowly unraveled. And most importantly, theyre about freedom, not the isolated, debt-ridden version sold by car commercials, but the real kind: the freedom to move, to breathe clean air, to live in a thriving community.Adapted from Roadkill: Unveiling the True Cost of Our Relationship with Cars, by Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay. Copyright 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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E-Commerce
For the last 17 months, Antonio Gianfrancesco has been working on the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Islanda sprawling wind farm that was designed to have 65 turbines and generate enough power for 350,000 homes. On August 22, Gianfrancesco was at home when he was awakened by a phone call. It was my coworker, who said that they had randomly stopped the Revolution project, he says. Honestly, I was pretty shocked about it. It came out of nowhere. And I was pretty uneasy because I didnt know if I was going to have a job in a weekand I still dont know if Im going to have a job in a day or a month. Everythings up in the air. The stop-work order came from the Trump administration, which cited unspecified national security concerns and told rsted, the Danish co-developer running the project, to pause everything. (A national security expert and former naval officer says that security concerns were already well vetted by the Department of Defense and others before the project was approved, and he points out that energy security is also a critical part of national security.) Attendees during a media tour of the Revolution Wind construction hub at the Port of Providence in Providence, Rhode Island, on Thursday, June 13, 2024. [Photo: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Trump has opposed the wind industry ever since he failed to stop a wind farm near one of his golf courses in Scotland in 2006. After reportedly promising fossil fuel executives last year that he would deliver their policy wish list if they donated $1 billion to his presidential campaign, Trump stepped up attacks on renewable energy after taking office. (Fossil fuel companies didnt give $1 billion, but donated $450 million to influence Trump and Congress, according to one report.) When he took office in January, Trump issued an executive order to stop new leasing for wind projects and fast-track oil and gas production on federal land. In April, he issued a stop-work order on the Empire Wind 1 offshore wind farm in New York, though he backed down after advocacy efforts from New York politicians and labor unions. In July, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ended tax credits for new renewable energy projects that start construction after July 2026; it also added new restrictions on foreign parts that will make it harder for projects to qualify. (Another executive order called for agencies to tighten the definition of what it means to “start construction.”) Trump also said federal waters would no longer be eligible for offshore wind development. This month, Trump told agencies to step up attacks against the wind industry. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that the Health and Human Services Department would be studying electromagnetic fields from wind farms, although previous studies have not found any health risks. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pulled $679 million in funding for infrastructure to support offshore wind power. All of this is happening while Trump argues that there is an energy emergencyand wind projects like Revolution Wind were poised to begin providing power. For the workers, its baffling. Revolution Wind is 80% complete. It could have been finished as soon as December and be powering the grid by next year, if everything had continued on schedule. Residents would have saved money on electric bills. After around two years of construction work on the project, Gianfrancesco says, Its kind of a slap in the face. Gianfrancesco, like hundreds of other workers on the project, went through hours of training to do specialized work on the project. His role, as a balance of power technician, includes safety inspections of anchor points, basic repairs, and other work on the massive 873-foot-tall turbines. Prior to his specialized training, he worked on building the concrete platforms that support the wind turbines. Until the project was frozen, workers rotated in weeks-long shifts on a large vessel 15 miles offshore. Gianfrancesco would work long hours for two weeks, and then have two weeks off. (Others spent even longer periods on the ship, in six-week shifts.) He happened to be on land when the work stopped, but some of his coworkers were stuck on board, unable to do anything but wait. “Some of the guys go to the gym four times a day,” one worker told The Wall Street Journal. When we spoke, Gianfrancesco was temporarily offshore again at Sunrise Wind, another rsted project off the coast of Long Island. But because that project is at a much earlier stage, theres little to do. A lot of people are just sitting out here, he says. Theres no progress. rsted sued the government on September 4, arguing that the stop-work order was illegal. The states of Rhode Island and Connecticut, which would both get electricity from the project, joined the suit. “This kind of erratic and reckless governing is blatantly illegal, and we’re suing to stop it,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 workers are in limbofrom union carpenters to electricians. If there are layoffs, “I’m not sure if I would be able to pay the rent,” Gianfrancesco says. “Other people here support their families. I support my sisters. The fact that it’s all up in the air is a strange feeling. “There were so many trainings that I had to do in the course of two years to be out here,” he adds. “It just feels like it’s all for nothing, especially since 80% of the project is done. And I was proud to be working on Revolution. It’s in the nameit’s revolutionary.” The project would have been only the fourth offshore wind farm in the U.S., and the largest one by far.
Category:
E-Commerce
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