A little over one year ago this month, a young woman was hired to be a cashier at The Bazaar, Inc., a family-owned merchandising business in Chicago that has been around for three generations. When she walked in looking for a job, she seemed capable and bright and willing to work hard, and so she was extended an offer to come on board. She was thrilled—and so was her mother.
Rajesh Anandan and his MIT roommate, Art Shectman, founded Ultranauts with one goal in mind: to prove that neurodiversity and autism could be a competitive advantage in business. “There is an incredible talent pool of adults on the autistic spectrum that has been overlooked for all the wrong reasons,” said 46-year-old Anandan in a recent interview with BBC. “People who haven’t had a fair shot to succeed at work, because of workplace and workflow and business practices that aren’t particularly effective for anyone but are especially damaging for anyone who is wired differently.”
2020 has challenged leaders in ways they never expected. Outside of the healthcare industries, corporate leaders may feel unequipped to navigate the medical complexities that come with leading through a pandemic. Even the most seasoned leaders who’ve won accolades for setting vision, values, strategy, and culture, have little understanding of the many unknowns that this pandemic and future ones might present. Yet, organizations now have a life or death role to play in protecting the health of employees, customers, and the public. One organization, Constellation Brands, has decided to add a new executive to the C-Suite – a Chief Medical Officer.
Once a week, the employees at the HR Software company Workday get a two-question survey. On #FeedbackFriday, employees might be asked first about their relationship with their manager, and then to reflect on their own mental and physical health. The questions vary from week to week, but the survey creates a robust data set of responses from over 10,000 employees that can be mined to help ensure the company’s culture stays on track. From the day that the idea for the company was sketched out over lunch at Jax Truckee Diner in California in 2005, co-founders Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield resolved to build a company that would scale by tapping into a rich tapestry of diverse talent.
If you’ve worn out a pair of walking shoes to break out of your Covid orbit, you might consider ordering your next pair from Allbirds. Founder Tim Brown, a native of New Zealand, was well versed in the qualities of merino wool. Inherently curious, Brown began asking himself why such a remarkable, sustainable resource was virtually absent in the footwear industry. And with that spirit of wonder, the Allbirds journey began. After years of researching and tinkering, Brown teamed up with Joey Zwillinger, an engineer and renewables expert. Together, they crafted a revolutionary wool fabric made specifically for footwear. The outcome? An entirely new category of shoes inspired by natural materials, and an ongoing mantra to create better things in a better way.
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra had just moved JCRT, their direct-to-consumer shirt company, to a new office on Pier 59 in New York City when New York’s stay-at-home order was issued in mid-March of 2020. Founded in 2016, JCRT is a modern menswear studio where craft meets tech through responsibly manufactured fashion. Their work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is in the permanent collections of The Victoria and Albert Museum and Museum at FIT. Heartsick that their beloved city was the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, the couple immediately set to work to so something to help.