2 6 1

WORLD CHANGING ID EAS

I N S P I R I N G R E A S O N S T O F E E L H O P E F U L A B O U T T H E F U T U R E

EVA
LONGORIA R.I.P.,
DIRECTS E.S.G.?
H E R F I R S T F E A T U R E, T H E C U LT U R E
WA R R I O R S F I G H T I N G
F L A M I N’ H O T
“ W O K E C A P I T A L I S M”
( Y E P, I T’S ARE GAINING
A B O U T C H E E T O S) G RO U N D — FA S T
<RXUSRUWIROLRLVPRUHWKDQ
what you invest in.
It’s what you invest for.

© 2022 Morningstar. All rights reserved.

 C O N T E N T S

F E A T U R E S
Cover: Stylist: Charlene Roxborough; hair: Ken Paves; makeup: Elan Bongiorno using L’Oréal

THE BUS INESS OF

ME NOPAUS E Eva Longoria’s Flamin’ Hot Project .........................40 ON THE

84
The boom in startups How her new film aims for Latino empowerment. COVER
seeking to alleviate the RIP, ESG?..................................................................48 Eva Longoria
symptoms of menopause photo-
“Woke capitalism” opponents are making startling headway.
and improve women’s graphed by
vitality is changing how World-Changing Ideas ............................................. 56 Josefina
we think about aging. These 44 companies pair ambitious visions with real results. Santos

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

01
ILLUSTR ATION BY SOPHI MIYOKO GULLBR ANTS
 T
N
R O
C O N T E N T S

F
P
U

16
FAS HION: TE LFAR ’ S
R ADIC AL INC LUS IVIT Y
The maker of the trendy
“Bushwick Birkin” went from
scrappy outsider to
industry darling. Now what?
ABOVE
Designer Telfar Clemens (left)
and co-creative director Babak
Radboy in the Telfar studio
Hair: Nay at the Stoop Hair; makeup: Raisa Flowers; manicure: Dawn Sterling (Clemens)
Design: The Death of a Place to Sit .....................07
What we lose when fast-food joints eliminate seating.
Finance: Lost in the Web3 Wilderness ................12
A dispatch from a mile-high event for Ethereum devotees.
Tech: Roblox Grows Up ....................................... 22
The platform is adding older players to court advertisers.
Work Life: Hiroki Koga .......................................26
The Oishii CEO takes our career questionnaire.
Branding: Going Bananas ..................................28
With the Savannah Bananas, it’s a whole new ball game.
Leadership: Making It Personal .........................34
Instacart’s Fidji Simo applies tech lessons to healthcare.
The Rebrand ........................................................96
Design agency Collins puts a new spin on GMOs.

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

02
PHOTOGR APH BY GIONCARLO VALENTINE
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you’ll make every move matter.

What would you like the power to do?®

Learn more at bankofamerica.com/bankingforbusiness

 F R O M T H E E D I T O R
B R E N D A N V A U G H A N

The Assault on ESG

B A C K I N A U G U S T 2 0 1 9, T H E B U S I N E S S R O U N D TA B L E , A scoring the same basic philosophy:
50-year-old consortium of CEOs, announced a world-changing Companies should serve society, not
idea. “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person just their bottom line.
to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of Nearly four years later, those
meaning and dignity,” the statement began. Signed by 181 CEOs, ideas are under ferocious attack. In
it went on to redefine the purpose of a corporation as serving not just share- “RIP, ESG?” (page 48), contributing
holders but all stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, and commu- writer Clint Rainey details the rise
nities. “We believe the free-market system is the best means of generating of the anti-ESG movement, an em-
good jobs, a strong and sustainable economy, innovation, a healthy envi- bryonic but energetic campaign to
ronment, and economic opportunity for all,” it proclaimed. roll back the progress of so-called
The statement sent ripples through the corporate establishment, but the woke capitalism. For anyone who
ideas behind it were hardly unique to this group, or all that new. What was shares the values defined by those
significant was that these leaders, in particular, formally recognized a set of 181 CEOs (and many others), Rain-
principles that had been building momentum in the business community ey’s story is both a must-read and a
for decades, morphing from acronyms like CSR (corporate social responsi- wake-up call. “The culture war has
bility) to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) but always under- come to Americans’ 401(k)s,” Rainey
writes, “and with it, a fight for the
soul of corporate America.”
FLAMIN’ HOT ROBLOX FOR
CHEETOS GROWN-UPS Speaking of world-changing
P.40 P.22 ideas, this issue contains 261 of them,
from new cooling carts for street ven-
dors to cleaner, quieter construc-
tion equipment to chicken-less egg
whites. Kudos to senior editor Ai-
mee Rawlins on leading the judging
for this year’s World-Changing Ideas
awards program. (By the way, that
number doesn’t count Eva Longo-
ria’s fine idea to make a movie about
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos; please find and
devour that story on page 40.)
Plus, as you may have noticed
from the look of this very page, we
redesigned the print version of Fast
Company. Creative director Mike
Schnaidt and his talented team—
design director Alice Alves, senior
associate art director Ben Kothe,
and design fellow Kat Kluge—never
fail to amaze me with their ideas,
inventiveness, and dedication to
making everything look perfect.
Paola Wiciak (Vaughan)

Will the revamped Fast Company

change the world? Maybe not, but
DESIGNER THE BUSINESS
it sure looks gorgeous, and some-
TELFAR CLEMENS OF MENOPAUSE times that’s more than enough. I
P.16 P.84 hope you agree.

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

04
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 D E S I G N

B Y M A R K W I L S O N

The Death
of a Place
to Sit When
fast-food
restaurants
eliminate
chairs and
tables, it’s not
just diners
who lose out.

GO TO JUST ABOUT ANY

fast-food restaurant in
the late morning, and
you’ll see older adults en-
joying a cup of coffee with
friends. Head there in the late after-
noon, and you’ll encounter teens get-
ting into (just a little) mischief after
school. These scenes exist because
our fast-food restaurants are more
than a place to grab an inexpensive
bite. They’re social necessities.
But that’s not the case in Fort
Worth, Texas, where a high-tech new
McDonald’s will take your order via
an app and deliver your fries via a
conveyor belt. What it won’t do? Pro-
vide you with a chair, a table, or even
access to a bathroom. The café in-
cludes only a kitchen, a counter and

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

07
PHOTOGR APHS BY YUDI EL A ECHE VARRIA
kiosks for ordering, and two drive-
through lanes. The McDonald’s store
is a prototype of what may be a fu-
ture format for the company.
The “Golden Arches” is hardly the
only restaurant chain that has been
investing in smaller, dining-room-
less outposts. Companies ranging
from Sweetgreen to Taco Bell are try-
ing similar tactics in an effort to add
new stores and get closer to diners
without having to invest in expensive
square footage and labor.
The very definition of “restau-
rant” is now in flux. During the
pandemic, nearly 80,000 of them
shuttered—but fast-food joints
thrived, with customers opting for
takeout and delivery. Ghost kitch-
ens also proliferated, eroding the
idea that a restaurant must have ta-
bles: As MrBeast and others have
shown, hospitality can be as ane-
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
08
NUMBERS BY
mic as a website with overeager
branding, so long as there’s a deep
fryer somewhere. For fast-food res-
taurants focused on expansion, a
new café might be little more than a
mechanism that allows them to pro-
cess more orders as they grow their
digital storefront.
But as bad as burgers may be for
D E S I G N
our cardiovascular health, fast-food
restaurants and their ilk have be-
come an important part of our so-
cial fabric. When Rodney Harrell, VP
of family, home, and community for
AARP, launched the first nationwide
“livability index” for people over 50
back in 2015, he found that 46% of
respondents reported meeting at
private establishments, like fast-
food restaurants, to socialize. For
teens whose social lives are increas-
ingly conducted in digital spaces,
chain restaurants are the rare non-
SPRING 2023
HUST
judgmental place outside the home
where they can gather. People with
insecure housing look to chain res-
taurants as warm and welcoming
dining rooms. Quick-service restau-
rants account for 60% of all restau-
rants in the United States. For every
one that disappears, we lose a place
for connection and support.
“Fast-food restaurants are in-
formational community centers,”
says Harrell. “I’d have equal con-
cern if you took away religious in-
stitutions or libraries—all of those
have a social [benefit] to them.” As
quickly as fast food lured us in, it’s
kicking us out.
R AY K RO C ’ S O R I G I N A L , WA L K- U P
McDonald’s, which debuted in 1955,
was not meant for sitting. The res-
taurant invested its square footage
in the kitchen, a model of post-WWII
assembly-line efficiency. It took Mc-
Donald’s another seven years to
open a restaurant with seating, and
even then, it was designed to get
you in and out as quickly as possi-
ble. Over the next two decades, fast-
food chains became renowned for
their “15-minute seats,” often made
of hard, molded plastic—works of
fetching, albeit uncomfortable, mid-
century modern design.
In the 1980s, however, when
consumer spending was strong,
fast-food chains upgraded their ap-
proach to compete with traditional
restaurants. They incorporated
softer seating and more inviting de-
sign. They added premium ingre-
dients and amenities ranging from
solariums (which became synony-
mous with Wendy’s) to free Wi-Fi
(which Starbucks and McDonald’s
both introduced in 2010). In the
meantime, fast-casual restaurant
chains like Panera and Chi potle
emerged, emphasizing freshly made
food and café-like seating.
In essence, restaurant chains
shifted from offering mere conve-
nience to hospitality—a trend that
culminated when, circa 1994, Star-
Prop stylist: Gözde Eker
bucks CEO Howard Schultz famously
began talking about his stores as
models of the “third place.” This third
place was neither your home nor your
office. It was another haunt, meant for
WILSON
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at 877-ASK-DELL or Dell.com/sb

D E S I G N
hanging out. As Schultz put it to Larry
King in 1997, his goal was to build
“what would become an extension
of America’s front porch.” Schultz
doubled down on this philosophy
when he returned as CEO in 2008 to
pull Starbucks out of a tailspin. Yet
as early as 2012, he was exploring a
different strategy—a prefabricated,
500-square-foot box with a walk-
up and drive-through, but no seats
nor public bathroom. That stripped-
down formula, which Starbucks qui-
etly replicated across much of the
United States, turned out to be the ca-
nary in the coffee beans.
Over the past few years, chains
that include Taco Bell, Burger King,
Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’, KFC, Panera,
Chipotle, Del Taco, Popeyes, and
Wingstop have all announced no-seat
stores, either as prototypes or—in the
case of Wingstop—a full-throated
ghost-kitchen business strategy.
Perhaps the most extreme version
launched in 2021, a “digital walk-up”
Popeyes in New Orleans that is os-
tensibly a wall fitted with a few order
screens and some shelves where your
lunch waits to be picked up.
These smaller formats are a
means for restaurants to spend less
money on build-outs and operations
while creeping closer to consumers.
R E S TAU R A N T T H AT D I S A P P E A R S ,
And if they offer better returns than
larger-format locations, it’s not hard
to imagine them becoming the stan-
dard. The salad chain Sweetgreen
“relocated” a larger eat-in store in
the D.C. area in 2022, reopening it
as a digital-only takeout spot last
year. The store’s revenue grew 30%
through this transition with no mea-
C O N N E C T I O N
surable downsides, according to the
company. “Given the success . . . we
are looking to open more in 2024
and beyond,” CEO Jonathan Neman
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
10
told investors in February during the
company’s Q4 earnings call.
This movement toward smaller
restaurants is now changing the
landscape of how and where peo-
ple can eat. A traditional Panera
is a 4,000-square-foot café, for in-
stance, designed for suburban liv-
ing. By ripping out the dining room,
and filling the entryway with auto-
mated order kiosks, Panera opened
its first “To Go” locations in Chi-
cago and New York City within the
past year; they’re as small as 1,000
square feet—the bulk of which is
reserved for back-of-house opera-
tions. If you didn’t take a hint from
the lack of chairs, even Panera’s new
menu design subtly promotes tak-
ing food to go by displaying photos
of its sandwiches on paper rather
than plates. Panera says it’s consid-
ering bringing the format to both
cities and suburbs.
It’s not just existing chains that
are embracing this micro-store ap-
proach. Three-year-old Blank Street
Coffee, which signals its soulless
efficiency right in its name, has
raised $93 million to bring its spar-
tan cafés to 65 locations across Lon-
don, Boston, and New York City.
The brand’s outposts are run with
skeleton crews and feature only a
few stools. In other words, it’s the
1950s all over again, with fast-food
and fast-casual chains transform-
ing back into tiny boxes with mini-
mal staffing and amenities.
FO R E V E RY FA S T- FO O D
WE LOSE A
P L A C E F O R
A N D
S U P P O R T.
SPRING 2023
SCHULT Z GE TS (AND TAKES) MUCH
of the credit for popularizing the
idea of the “third place,” but the
term was coined by the late urban
sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his
1989 book The Great Good Place.
Inspired by his own suburban life
in Pensacola, Florida, Oldenburg
explored the role that restaurants
and cafés, among other spots, play
in our social fabric and civic life. He
saw these third places appearing
throughout history, from the agora
(public squares) of Greek democ-
racy to the taverns that fomented
the American Revolution.
To create a proper third place, ex-
plains Karen Christensen, a writer
and editor who enjoyed a multi-
decade friendship and collaboration
with Oldenburg, “you almost always
need tables, some kind of food, and
it can’t be too expensive.” She con-
tinues: “In third places, talking is
the key, and if you’re worried about
being pushed out the door or about
the prices, you’re not going to relax.”
Barbershops, churches, and li-
braries are all third places, too, and
there was even a time in the 20th
century when post offices were a
popular hangout, Christensen notes.
But as these sites recede—and U.S.
cities remove benches from parks—
the prospect of having a lengthy,
inexpensive meetup with friends
exists almost nowhere today but at
low-cost restaurants.
And if those restaurants don’t
have seats—if their app experience
is more or less the only experience—
they aren’t really a place for us at all.
Swing by a Starbucks flooded with
mobile orders, and you’ll see just how
insignificant the third place has be-
come. It’s why, earlier this year, when
Schultz returned to Starbucks and
announced a new initiative, an “au-
thentic digital third place” of pixel-
built NFTs and other digital rewards,
Christensen rolled her eyes. “I resent
him using the term,” she says.
The rise of McDonald’s elim-
inated the American diner as we
knew it. The rise of Starbucks offset
the balance even more. They’re now
both, it seems, conspiring to elim-
inate what little affordable space
we have left.
Revolutionizing the
immigration process

1
 Lost in the Web3 Wilderness
The scene from ETHDenver, where
the blockchain faithful weather the
crypto winter. The legal weed helps.
E

B R O D E R I C K
C
N
A

R Y A N
N
I

B Y
F

March 2023: As a record 30,000 people register for ETHDenver, the longest-running crypto-
currency meetup in the world, you’d never know the price of Ethereum is down two-thirds from
its November 2021 peak. The event mixes a tech conference, a hackathon, and the kaleido-
scopic psychedelia of an EDM music festival. If there’s a path out of crypto winter, it’s here. . . .

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

12
ILLUSTR ATIONS BY STEPHEN MAURICE GR AHAM
 While the bufficorns (buffalo-unicorn hybrids) roam, a bard
of the blockchain addresses the elephant in the room, disgraced
crypto kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried.

The theme/buzzword of this year’s event? “Abstraction.”

Early proof that abstraction is the future? Starbucks.

But finding a path forward for the Eth community isn’t easy. It’s torn apart by infighting, with
competing visions for how to implement decentralization and smash the existing financial markets.

ETHDenver’s secret is that partying heals all divides . . .

. . . and the legal weed doesn’t hurt either. But this community remains obsessed with restricting access.

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
14
SPRING 2023
How do you get the average person to buy into Web3? The future, DeGods says, is thinking
Ask DeGods . . . NFT entrepreneur Frank DeGods. more like creators than startups.

F I N A N C E
But why go through all this trouble just to build a better tip jar?

The conference ends, naturally, with a Shark Tank–style competition with developers pitching wild new ideas that
impressed everyone in the audience. Whether they’ll ever impress anyone outside the conference remains to be seen.
 FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023
16
PHOTOGR APHS BY GIONCARLO VALENTINE

Telfar’s Inclusive Exclusivity Designer Telfar
Clemens has built his outsider brand into a cultural
and financial powerhouse. What’s next?
O N A D R E A R Y F E B R U A R Y D AY I N N E W
York City, the Queens-based fashion designer
Telfar Clemens is 3,000 miles away, sitting in
a thatched-roof bungalow overlooking a beach
in the Mexican resort town of Puerto Escon-
dido. Beside him, his business partner and co-creative di-
rector, Babak Radboy, is wearing a faded orange tee and
round wire glasses, rolling a cigarette. Clemens himself is
shirtless, wearing a gold necklace and black shorts, both
emblazoned with his brand’s logo, a T encircled by a C.
The pair look cozy together. “My Wikipedia page used
to say that Babak and I were a couple, and that we had a
son together,” Clemens recalls, laughing. (Radboy is ac-
tually married to Telfar’s stylist, Avena Gallagher, and
their 8-year-old son, Malcolm, sits behind him playing
a video game.) “I just believe in never working with any-
one I don’t like.”
Telfar and Radboy hopped on a plane to Mexico af-
ter shooting their Spring/Summer 2023 collection for
a weeklong escape from the frenetic pace of their past
couple years. Telfar’s logo-embossed tote bags, priced
between $150 and $258, were the most-searched acces-
sory of the pandemic, according to shopping app Lyst.
They’ve been spotted on everyone from Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez to Megan Thee Stallion; Beyoncé gave
them a shout-out on her 2022 album, Renaissance, say-
ing that she’d put her Hermès Birkin in storage in favor
of a Telfar status bag.
Those bags, which sell out on the Telfar website in
seconds, have become the foundation for a fast-growing
fashion brand that includes streetwear, shoes, and other
accessories. In 2019, Telfar reportedly took in $1.9 mil-
lion in revenue. Today, the company can make upwards
F A S H I O N
B Y E L I Z A B E T H S E G R A N
of $7 million in a single product drop. In part because of
its move from a wholesale model to a direct-to-consumer
one in 2019, Telfar’s DTC U.S. sales grew an eye-popping
362% in 2021, according to Bloomberg Second Measure,
followed by 17% growth in 2022. So far, Clemens and Rad-
boy’s 2023 has involved transforming the brand’s new
Ridgewood, Queens, studio into a soundstage for film
and photo shoots; collaborations with Ugg and Canadian
outerwear maker Moose Knuckles; and the release of a
highly anticipated wallet that sold out within five min-
utes. “Sometimes we need a trip away from it all,” Cle-
mens says. “We hang out here in Mexico a lot. And even
here, you see people carrying our bag.”
Amid his brand’s increased visibility, the 38-year-old
Clemens has often been portrayed as an up-and-coming
designer, but he’s been at it since 2004, when he launched
Telfar as a teenager. Starting with unisex clothing that
toyed with gendered styles—slinky spaghetti straps
for men and oversize basketball jerseys for women—
Telfar has focused on groups that the fashion industry
has long ignored, like Black and queer consumers. “Clem-
ens catered to an underserved community, creating an
entirely new clientele in the fashion industry,” says Anne
Line Hansen, founder of the luxury fashion consultancy
ALH Advisory. “He wrote his own playbook.”
FOR CLEMENS’S FIRST DEC ADE IN BUSINESS, FASHION
FA N S E R V I C E gatekeepers created obstacles to his success. His collec-
Clemens
(front) and
tions were ignored by Vogue. He couldn’t get traditional
Radboy have sponsors for fashion shows, so he found unexpected
built Telfar champions, like Kmart and White Castle, for which Tel-
around a
loyal group far designed and produced 10,000 staff uniforms. Over
of shoppers. the past five years, though, as fashion has woken up to

the need for diversity, Clemens has
been receiving mainstream acco-
lades. In 2017, he won the industry’s
most prestigious award, the CFDA/
Vogue Fashion Fund; two years later,
he was invited to present at Paris
and Florence fashion weeks. Clem-
F A S H I O N
ens and Radboy balk at the reason
for the industry’s rapid tune change.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion sud-
denly came to fashion,” says Radboy,
a graphic artist who joined Telfar in
2014. “Suddenly, we were being mo-
bilized for their agenda. We became
exploitable.”
Clemens and Radboy refused
to play along, creating a success-
ful business by rejecting the fash-
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
18
ion industry’s notions of what that
looks like: They stopped courting
glossy magazines and showing col-
lections at New York Fashion Week
and others. They focused on mak-
ing products accessible to less-
affluent consumers while cultivating
a sense of community and introduc-
ing just enough scarcity to make the
brand covetable. Today, even as his
brand grows, Clemens says he has
no desire to follow in the footsteps
of other top designers.
Late last year, as rumors swirled
about who would succeed the late
Virgil Abloh as Louis Vuitton’s mens-
wear director, Clemens’s name was
floated, alongside Grace Wales Bon-
SPRING 2023
B U ILT F R O M S C R AT C H
Clemens, 38, has
been growing Telfar
since he was a teen.
ner and Martine Rose, for the role
that ultimately went to Pharrell Wil-
liams. Clemens was insulted that
his name was invoked in an imag-
inary competition against other
Black designers—not least because
he didn’t even want the job. “The
definition of success in the fashion
industry is to leave your business to
give all your ideas to a bigger fash-
ion house, which can fire you at any
time,” he says. “That’s what a lot of
designers want for their lives, but
that’s not me.”
WITH SE VEN TELFA R TOTES IN HE R
collection, New York–based beauty
influencer Ohemaa Bonsu is an ex-
pert at snagging a bag. When the Tel-
far newsletter announces a drop, she
puts the date on her calendar, sets a
timer for a minute before the brand’s
typical 9 a.m. sale time, and ensures
that her browser will autofill her ad-
dress and credit card details. “If you
check out before 9:01, you’re going
to get the bag,” she explains to her
followers on YouTube. “At 9:02, you
have a chance, but it might sell out.
By 9:03, forget it.”
This sort of demand is typically
reserved for top luxury labels and
hypebeast staples like Supreme.
Hair: Nay at the Stoop Hair; makeup: Raisa Flowers; manicure: Dawn Sterling (Clemens)
Telfar straddles those worlds—it’s
a status brand, but one subject to
maintaining consumer interest in
drops. Right now, that interest is
high. On resale site Rebag, for in-
stance, secondhand Telfar bags sell
for nearly double their original re-
tail price, making them a better in-
vestment than Hermès or Chanel.
But while French luxury houses cre-
ate desire and exclusivity by making
bags prohibitively expensive, Clem-
ens and Radboy have been deliberate
about pricing products affordably,
living up to the brand’s motto: “It’s
not for you. It’s for everyone.”
“Telfar has managed to be both in-
clusive and exclusive,” says Hansen,
 B E C O M E A S TA N D O U T
P E R F O R M E R A N D S U C C E S SFU L
J O B C A N D I D AT E
Learn from regular Fast Company contributor,
Judith Humphrey, how to create a clear, power-
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support, and lands you that dream job.
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of ALH Advisory. “It’s a truly authen-
tic approach that is hard to replicate,
which is why no one can really com-
pete with them.”
Clemens had long felt that retail-
ers had too much control over Tel-
far’s prices and order volumes, so a
F A S H I O N
year before the pandemic, he cut ties
with them. He’s never taken capital
from outside investors, bootstrap-
ping the brand from its inception.
In 2019, when Telfar needed cash
to ramp up production in its Chi-
nese factory, Clemens deployed the
$400,000 he'd won from the CFDA/
Vogue Fashion Fund prize, and cus-
tomer preorders funded forthcom-
ing collections. In 2020, when Gap
announced a collaboration with Tel-
far only to unceremoniously back
out of it, Clemens felt justified in
staying clear of the rest of the fash-
ion industry. “Our investors are our
customers,” he says. “I want to keep
as many [corporate] people away
from us as possible.”
Telfar has baked community en-
gagement into product drops. You
need to be glued to its newsletter
or social media feeds to hear about
product launches. This rewards the
brand’s die-hard fans and—thanks
to a battery of checkout questions
to prove shoppers aren’t bots—helps
weed out speculators who buy bags
only to resell them. “At many fash-
ion brands, price is a barrier to en-
try,” says Radboy. “But for us, the
barrier to entry is being plugged in.
Our currency is connection.”
The pair has innovated on pricing
too. A year ago, they started think-
ing about how to find a price point
for popular items that would allow
AT M A N Y FA S H I O N B R A N D S ,
P R I C E I S A B A R R I E R T O E N T R Y. B U T F O R U S , T H E B A R R I E R
TO ENTRY IS BEING PLUGGED IN.
O U R C U R R E N C Y
C O N N E C T I O N .”
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
20
them to manufacture larger volumes
at lower cost, passing the savings on
to their customers. The result is a dy-
namic pricing tool that they began
testing on Telfar’s website this March
along with a new collection drop, and
that was used to gather product de-
mand data on drops through April.
Each product in the drop was initially
listed at its wholesale cost. But as the
seconds ticked by, the price tags in-
creased, with its normal retail price
constituting its highest possible cost.
The price of a product at the moment
it sold out became its fixed price. For
instance, the starting price of a black
hoodie T-shirt, which might retail in
stores for $272, was $68. Like many
other products in the drop, it sold
out within seconds, making its final
price $127—and it will stay that way
the next time Telfar sells it.
“It’s a complete reversal of how
the fashion industry does things,”
Radboy says. “The more they want
it, the lower [the] cost.”
Telfar also uses collaborations
to push back against the perception
that it is a high-end label. During
New York Fashion Week last Sep-
tember, the brand held a pop-up at
the Downtown Brooklyn location
of Rainbow, a value clothing chain
known for giving budget shoppers
access to the hottest trends, with
shirts and shoes as low as $10.
More than 7,000 Telfar fans
swarmed the storefront for the one-
day event. Telfar hired dancers to
keep the crowds entertained; tod-
dlers bopped along while they waited
with their parents, carrying mini Tel-
far totes over their shoulders. The
chaotic, carnivalesque atmosphere
I S
SPRING 2023
was a world away from other invite-
only, velvet-rope fashion events hap-
pening a short train ride away in
Manhattan. And it paid off—3,500
bags were sold from the storefront,
and the related online drop sold
45,000 bags in the first 15 minutes.
“This was the first time many
people in fashion had heard of Rain-
bow,” says Busayo Olupona, a Ni-
gerian American fashion designer.
“Telfar has completely upset notions
of status, transforming the lowbrow
into the highbrow. He’s forced the
industry to take a closer look at cus-
tomers they had never considered
worth paying attention to before.”
The people who made it inside the
storefront weren’t the only ones who
were able to take part in the pop-up.
The entire event was livestreamed
on Telfar TV, the brand’s version of
a public-access channel. Launched
two years ago, Telfar TV—which can
be viewed on Roku, Apple TV, and on
the Telfar website—is meant to fos-
ter customer interaction. It initially
was the only way to buy Telfar’s duf-
fle bag, broadcasting QR codes that
led to a purchase site.
Radboy and Clemens are mak-
ing a big programming push for Tel-
far TV. They’ve partnered with Black
film collective the Ummah Chroma to
create TV shows for the channel, in-
cluding unveiling upcoming collec-
tions and offering behind-the-scenes
looks at the design process. They’ve
already banked seven months’ worth
of content that will begin stream-
ing in the coming months alongside
fan-submitted videos that currently
comprise all of Telfar TV’s content.
“Slowly, the content is going to meld,
creating a feedback loop between us
and our community,” Radboy says.
Telfar TV is a way for Clemens to
deepen his relationship with the
community that has long embraced
him. As he looks ahead, he’s focused
on knitting even closer ties with
these customers, further growing a
loyal base less fickle than the fashion
world writ large. “It’s about keeping
that relationship with our customer
meaningful and entering the fabric
of their lives,” Clemens says. “I feel
like we’re only just beginning to get
to know each other.”
Innovating for
sustainability
 T E C H

B Y H A R R Y M C C R A C K E N

Roblox Grows Up The 3D world

for kids is attracting an older audience—
and brands are taking notice.
 “ W H E N YO U ’ R E R E A DY, F E E L F R E E TO TA K E brought in $2.2 billion in revenue and had adjusted
your seat with grace, landing into the body earnings of $356.5 million in 2022. Its primary source of
with ease, trusting whatever posture feels revenue comes via its virtual economy, which is based
most supportive.” on “Robux,” the digital currency that users purchase to
My Roblox avatar—a blocky, smiley-faced pay for gameplay experiences, clothing and accessories
little guy with shaggy orange hair, a plasticky gray com- for their avatars, and even new moves and expressions.
plexion, and hinged limbs—is rolling out his yoga mat. (For $2.50 in Robux, I could teach my avatar to do jump-
As a soothing voice coaches him, he kneels with palms ing jacks; for $3.74, I could buy him a frowny face.) Since
outstretched, surrounded by other avatars seeking their older players can spend Robux more freely than younger
own inner peace. ones, their increased presence also opens up revenue
By the standards of Roblox’s 3D playground, this exer- streams such as upcoming “immersive ads” that will
cise in virtual mindfulness isn’t exactly action-packed— envelop players age 13 and up in marketing messages.
and that’s the point. “We wanted something calm and Recently, Roblox has been registering older users
tranquil, where you can tune in by tuning out,” says at an impressive clip. The fastest-growing age group is
Angélic Vendette, global head of marketing at yoga-wear 17-to-24-year-olds, a demographic that grew by 33% year
maker Alo, which created the experience. So, apparently, over year and now accounts for 22% of all users. A full
did plenty of Roblox users: They’ve visited the virtual 55% of its users are older than 13.
yoga studio more than 70 million times.
The Alo Sanctuary’s popularity isn’t just a market-
ing coup for Alo. It’s also a sign that the effort Roblox
has been putting into transcending its roots as a vaguely
educational, Lego-like digital construction kit for small
children is paying off. The company’s aspirations now
go well beyond entertaining and educating little kids:
The long-term mission, says cofounder and CEO David
Baszucki, is “bringing a billion people together.”
Before Roblox gets anywhere near that figure—at
the end of 2022, the platform hit 59 million daily users,
up 19% year over year and more than triple the figure
in 2019—aging up its audience is critical to its business
plan. The company, which went public in March 2021,

23

This growth spurt has happened amid (and even out-
lasted a slowdown in) the burbling hype for the metaverse,
the 3D internet we might all theoretically choose to im-
merse ourselves in—maybe, someday, once the neces-
sary technology exists. Nobody has talked up the concept
more than Mark Zuckerberg, who underlined his commit-
ment by changing Facebook’s corporate name to Meta in
October 2021. A year after that, however, The Wall Street
Journal reported that Meta’s Horizon Worlds, a proto-
metaverse for its Quest VR headsets, was struggling to get
visitors to return, leaving its population under 200,000.
Meanwhile, even if Roblox isn’t the full-blown meta-
verse, it has the benefit of actually existing at scale on
devices people already own: PCs, phones, tablets, and
the Xbox. From the start, it’s allowed anyone to build
games and other experiences and make them available
to other users, letting everyone from kids to marketers
help shape its future. Consequently, as consumers and
businesses have become metaverse-curious, Roblox has
arguably benefited more than anyone else, including two
other major virtual destinations, Microsoft’s Minecraft
and Epic Games’ Fortnite.
That gives the platform every incentive to create
a single environment that speaks to a wide audience:
“We’re not divided into Roblox Kids, Roblox Adults, Ro-
blox Whatever,” explains chief product officer Manuel
Bronstein. Still, with minors a core constituency of the
platform, its expansion plans retain a family-friendly
aura. Last September, for example, Roblox introduced
movie-rating-like “experience guidelines” that indi-
cate the appropriate age group for a particular creation.
But in every context, wholesomeness prevails. Mild or
moderate violence is permissible, but not gore. Even
swearing violates the community standards, which
T E C H
stress civility as an overarching principle. (Controver-
sies caused by these standards not being met persist,
but anything racy or offensive has managed to sneak
by the moderation system.)
As companies contemplate planting their flags in
metaverse-like immersive 3D worlds, Roblox’s aggres-
sively uncontroversial nature is often a selling point.
“Most brands don’t want to be in Grand Theft Auto,”
says Joe Ferencz, CEO of developer Gamefam, whose
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
24
ILLUSTR ATIONS BY
work on Roblox experiences includes a Kung Fu Panda
game and a September 2022 concert experience head-
lined by the Chainsmokers that has more than 3 million
lifetime visits. He adds that half-hearted forays don’t
work: “There’s a pretty large graveyard of brands on Ro-
blox that have somewhere between zero and 20 people
in their experiences at any time.”
Many success stories involve brands you’d expect
to be welcomed by Roblox’s still-youthful audience.
Skateboard-shoe maker Vans’s virtual skate park, for
example, has racked up 93 million hours of playing
time. Being famously beloved by kids is not a prerequi-
site, though. Gucci made its Roblox debut in 2020 with
digital sneakers for avatars, then opened a pop-up Gu-
cci Garden exhibition in 2021 and, last year, an ongo-
ing Gucci Town—whose store, café, and games have
garnered more than 41 million visits. You can even pay
the equivalent of $2.62 in Robux for an “exquisite Gucci
hoodie” for your avatar. Charles Hambro, CEO of meta-
verse data company Geeiq—whose clients include Gucci,
H&M, and L’Oréal—says the main incentive for most
brand experiences is not immediate profit from in-game
purchases but “being culturally relevant and meeting
people where they are.” Brands continue to stake their
claims on the platform, including H&M, whose Looop-
topia fashion game debuted in January and had 4.4 mil-
lion visits by late March.
While it’s still unclear whether Roblox’s popularity
presages an era when commerce in the metaverse be-
comes a big business, it could. And this time, compa-
nies that were slow to seize past opportunities would
like to err on the side of getting in early. “When social
media started, a lot of the conversations they were hav-
ing in big brands were like, ‘But are our customers re-
ally on Snapchat? Are people really going to buy from
Instagram?’ ” says Alice Delahunt, CEO of Web3 fashion
platform Syky and a veteran of Burberry’s and Ralph
Lauren’s digital teams. “Now we know that many of the
biggest challenger brands of the last 10 to 15 years were
those that created and cultivated Instagram audiences
and did social commerce and DTC strategies that bigger
brands were still trying to grapple with.”
If the flat social media we’ve known does give way to
a brave new 3D world, Roblox’s long history and present
momentum offer it a formidable head start on other plat-
forms. But its to-do list remains at least as long as its rec-
ord of accomplishments. At the moment, even an avatar
decked out in luxury threads can give off a toylike Play-
mobil vibe. The company is playing catch-up on tech-
nologies that help developers create richer experiences
with realistic graphics and physics akin to those in high-
end video games—an investment that is “constantly lev-
eling up,” according to chief scientist Morgan McGuire.
With more than 2,100 employees—up from 830 in
fall 2020—Roblox is still girding itself for the challenges
ahead. “We’ve been working on this for 15 years, making
radical innovations all along the way,” says CEO Baszucki.
“We’ll be working on it for another 15 years. And it’s go-
ing to get better and better and more engaging as we go.”
SPRING 2023
MARIA DO ROSÁRIO FR ADE
A new way to measure
sustainable investing

3
 W O R K L I F E

B Y Y A S M I N G A G N E

What’s your best question the talked about

habit, and your status quo. dealing with
worst? I’m in bed What’s some a two-sided
by 9 p.m. and up advice you’re market model.
by 5 a.m., then I glad you ig- Do you have a
get on the tread- nored? I’m glad mantra? I live
mill; running is my I ignored my by this Da Vinci
meditation. My professors who quote: “When
bad habit is that told me nobody fortune comes,
I have a sweet would invest in seize her firmly
tooth and when I Oishii. Our first by the forelock,
find a new sweet investor was an for, I tell you,
treat, I can’t stop entrepreneur she is bald at
thinking about I met at a food- the back.”
it. Right now, it’s technology con- Is there a meal
the cruller from ference. We used you still fanta-
New York’s Daily the funds to size about? The
Provisions. fly strawberries Chef’s Table at
What do you do from Tokyo to Brooklyn Fare [a
when you’re New York to con- three-Michelin-
creatively stuck? duct our first star restaurant in
Try new restau- cold-call trips to NYC’s Hudson
rants. I’ll go out of Michelin-starred Yards]. The pride
my way to go to restaurants. and craftsman-
Manhattan. Do you have a ship that César
What’s the best work uniform? Ramirez and his
mistake you Black sweatshirt, team put into ev-
ever made? Ev- jeans, and socks, ery dish . . . there
eryone thought all from Uniqlo. is nothing like it.
I was making What’s always Do you have
a mistake when in your bag? a “get pumped”
I decided to My MacBook song? “Straw-
pursue agricul- and a bar of berry Fields
ture after get- Compartes’s dark Forever” by
ting an MBA. chocolate with the Beatles.
How do you un- salted pretzel. What advice
plug? I travel to What is your would you give
a new place on biggest indul- your younger
my own. After I gence? Edomae- self? I’d tell

Luxury strawberry farmer

quit a job where style sushi. 15-year-old Hi-
I was running How do you roki to stay confi-
R&D for several exercise? I run, dent and believe

Hiroki Koga takes Japanese agri-

culture compa-
nies, I went
and I love skiing
in Whistler,
British Columbia,
in himself. I al-
ways felt weird
growing up in

our career questionnaire. to Rwanda. The

exposure to
a new culture
or Hokkaido,
Japan. I also
love to play and
Japan. I had big
dreams and I
always felt like
allowed me to watch soccer. the odd man out.
Do you have
F O R TO K YO - B O R N H I R O K I KO GA , T H E I D E A TO S E L L H I G H - a favorite pod-
end strawberries stemmed from a case of homesickness. After cast? How I Built
getting an MBA in the United States, Koga got the idea to re- This. I enjoyed
the episode
create the fruit he remembered eating on special occasions as a with DoorDash
boy. He started cold-calling chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants founder Tony
to get their support for his product. Eventually, he raised $50 million to set Xu because he
up Oishii’s vertical farming operations, in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 2019.

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

26
ILLUSTR ATION BY DÓR A KISTELEKI
Banking with a
customer focus
—

3
 N G

M U E L L E R
I
D
N

P A U L
A

B Y
R
B

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

28
PHOTOGR APHS BY ANDRE W HE THERINGTON
Going
Bananas
Savannah’s
traveling
baseball
circus is ener-
gizing the
old game.

T H E S AVA N N A H
Bananas have turned
America’s sedate pastime
on its head, and in the
process, created a mar-
keting machine. The team’s owner,
Jesse Cole, has developed “Banana
Ball,” where choreographed dances
and pitchers setting the baseball on
fire mid-game are resonating with
fans weary of traditional monotony.
The stunts have been rehearsed, but
the gameplay and opponents are real,
though subject to the peculiar Ba-
nana Ball rules (e.g., batters can steal
first on any wild pitch). The team’s
revenue model is as wacky as its on-
field product: no in-stadium adver-
tising; no traditional sponsorship
deals, though in February the team
announced that Zappos will be its
exclusive footwear partner. The Ba-
nanas have generated revenue solely
from ticket sales, food and beverage
sales, and merchandise, surpassing
$10 million last year. The team and its
sibling squad, the Party Animals, will
visit 33 cities this season, a “world
tour” that also includes Banana Ball
exhibition games against minor-
league pro clubs like the Charleston
Dirty Birds and the Kansas City Mon-
archs. In creating the greatest show in
baseball, Cole has relied on a simple
philosophy. “Whatever’s normal,” he
says, “do the exact opposite.”
TOP BANANA selfie with most people THE NEW and pitches club’s second
Previous some of the in banana cos- GOLD on stilts, cheerleading
spread: Jesse fans who tumes (1,968) S TA N D A R D and “Banana squad, the
Cole, in his helped break during the Dakota King” Bruce Man-Nanas.
signature the world club’s 2023 Albritton (below) is one
yellow tuxedo record for the home opener (above) bats of the three
and bowler, in Georgia on original mem-
poses for a February 25. bers of the

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
30
SPRING 2023
 B R A N D I N G

G O O D CHEER meetings, in an outfield tics splits as the Man- team of senior

The Bananas’ which players game of ping- position. Nanas, women, has
formula for and staff pong during The Dad Bod launched in been perform-
innovation pitch their live action or Cheerleading 2019, while ing since 2016.
begins with wildest batting while Squad (above), the Banana
weekly OTT ideas, like executing also known Nanas (below),
(over-the-top) a full gymnas- the dance
 B R A N D I N G

P L AY I N G cial media. the press box miss a viral 2016, and its
FOR LAUGHS Drones fly so the Bananas content 33-city 2023
The team overhead at (who recently opportunity. Banana Ball
doesn’t spend each game surpassed The team has World Tour
money on mar- and spotters 5 million fol- sold out every has a ticket
keting but watch from lowers on game since waitlist of
relies on so- TikTok) never more than half
a million.

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
32
SPRING 2023
Cloud computing for all
—
 L E A D E R S H I P

B Y Y A S M I N G A G N E

Making It
Personal At
Instacart
and her new
healthcare
institute,
Fidji Simo is
finding new
ways to
channel user
data toward
targeted
solutions.

ON THE EIGHTH AND

ninth floors of a pristine
building in a research
park in Salt Lake City,
employees in gray uni-
forms tread under gold light fixtures,
past abstract artwork, and around
plush couches in the waiting area
where they check patients in. This
isn’t a high-end spa, though the gen-
tle intake process was designed to
mimic exactly that kind of environ-
ment. It’s the Metrodora Institute, a

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

34
PHOTOGR APH BY KIM R AFF

P R O V I D E R-
I N- C H IE F
Fidji Simo
sees overlap
between gro-
cery delivery
and health.
$35 million clinic and research facil-
ity cofounded last year by Instacart
CEO Fidji Simo. Metrodora is dedi-
cated to treating women with neuro-
immune axis disorders: diseases
including endometriosis, Guillain-
Barré syndrome, long COVID, mul-
tiple sclerosis, lupus, and more, in
which the immune system appears
to attack the nervous system. It
opened to the public in March, and
by the end of the year it expects to
be treating 15,000 women, both at
this outpatient facility, where there
are currently thousands of people
on the waitlist, and remotely, via
telehealth consultations.
The hospital-like aspects of the
clinic—the gurneys, feeding tubes,
pelvic exam rooms—exist along-
side the VR-assisted treadmill area,
serene yoga space, and cozy suite
where patients with mobility issues
can practice getting in and out of
bed. Simo says that the arrangement
is designed to identify and treat the
poorly understood combinations of
symptoms associated with neuroim-
mune disorders, which can include
anything from nausea and food in-
tolerances to brain fog and more.
Simo, a marketer by training who
spent more than a decade at Meta,
eventually overseeing the flagship
Facebook app, describes herself
as “someone who always thinks of
everything as a system.” She was
inspired to start Metrodora after
dealing with endometriosis dur-
ing pregnancy and then falling sick
again with another chronic illness,
postural tachycardia syndrome, or
POTS, which is triggered when a
patient’s heart rate increases rap-
idly upon standing, causing light-
headedness. It would take a couple
of years for her to learn that though
the symptoms for both illnesses are
different, they can be related, and
having one makes you at higher
risk for having the other. “I found
that the level of care and the abil-
ity to find cures was, honestly, so
poor,” Simo says. She wanted to cre-
ate a clinic that would emulate can-
cer treatment centers like Houston’s
MD Anderson, where silos between
fields are removed, and treating a
patient can involve many different
specialists working together. When
dealing with issues of the nervous
system, she says, “we need to un-
derstand the pathophysiology of the
disease. We believe that every hu-
man is unique. Personalized medi-
cine should be a thing.”
Personalization is central to her
primary job, too. As CEO of Insta-
cart, she works constantly to better
tailor grocery delivery to individ-
ual customers. They are vastly dif-
ferent businesses, of course, but
there is overlap: Both involve copi-
ous amounts of data, and both are
complex marketplaces, with multi-
ple stakeholders. At Instacart, Simo
says that means keeping stores,
brands, customers, and delivery
people happy, while at Metrodora,
where she is president—cofounder
and neurogastroenterologist Laura
Pace is CEO—it’s about caring for pa-
tients, staff, investors, and data part-
ners. Combined, that’s a whole lot
of interests for one person to man-
age, no matter how much yoga and
soft lighting is involved. Simo, 37,
the daughter of a sardine fisherman
and boutique owner from the sea-
side town of Sète, France—she was
named after the perfume by Guy
Laroche, which her mother wore—
takes a sunny view of it: “I just love
learning,” she says. “It sounds so
cliché, but I get so excited in the job
when I’m learning something new.”
Metrodora, which is funded by
private investors, including Simo
herself, is a for-profit clinic and re-
search center (though it does take
insurance and operates a related
nonprofit research foundation).
Simo says it would have been dif-
ficult to raise the $35 million seed
money needed with a nonprofit des-
ignation. Perhaps, but underneath
Metrodora lies a savvy business
model: The institute collects com-
plete sets of data and samples from
consenting patients and provides
them to partner labs at research in-
stitutions and biotech firms that use
them to help find cures. Agreements
with institutions differ, but Metro-
dora and its investors could poten-
tially profit in the future from cures
they had a hand in producing.
Sequoia Capital partner Michael
Moritz, who invested $8.9 million in
Instacart in 2013 and sat on the com-
pany’s board, recalls the drive he
made from San Francisco to Simo’s
home in Carmel-by-the-Sea to per-
suade her to become Instacart’s CEO.
She’d been happy at Meta, where for
years she gamely answered tough
questions from the public about se-
curity and privacy head-on and with
a smile. At the same time, she was
considering leaving Meta to devote
all of her time to Metrodora, which
she had been working on for a year.
“I think she realized she would be a
grandmother before possibly run-
ning Meta, and I told her she was too
young to not run a company [that
could become public],” Moritz says.
Simo, who was already on In-
stacart’s board, was persuaded. “I
felt like we could create an ecosys-
tem of partners and help all of them
win,” she says. She plowed ahead,
working on Metrodora in her spare
time. “I always joke that when you
have a chronic illness, you’re not
going to go hiking or take up ten-
nis. My hobby is building [Metro-
dora],” she says. “A lot of the value I
bring is not necessarily the number

L E A D E R S H I P
of hours I put in, but the way I think
about strategy and the ambition of
the clinic, and how I use my connec-
tions in the industry.”
Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote
two books and started a founda-
tion while Meta’s COO, describes
Simo as “a leader who gets great re-
sults out of people while also being
kind and generous.” Though Simo’s
diplomatic skills, which Sandberg
highlights—negotiating, reassur-
ing, cajoling parties with competing
interests—are essential to her work
at Instacart and Metrodora, Simo
is nevertheless unmistakably “in
charge,” as the diamond-encrusted
necklace she wears near her collar-
bone reads. Not that it’s been easy.
The 10-year-old Instacart had
enjoyed a pandemic bump in 2020—
sales rose 330% that year—but when
Simo took over as CEO from co-
founder Apoorva Mehta in August
2021, growth had slowed. The com-
pany had been accused of not ade-
quately compensating some delivery
workers who suspected they had
COVID-19 and were instructed to
self-isolate, and not helping others
with issues like tip-baiting, when
customers promise a large tip only
to change their mind once items
are delivered. There was also In-
stacart’s perennial problem: Stores
were wary of the platform eating
into their margins, since the com-
pany charged hefty fees.
Then, just over a year after Simo
took the reins, tech stocks crashed.
Instacart, which had been on the
verge of going public, postponed
its IPO. Employees waiting to cash
in on their equity were further up-
set to see the company slash its in-
ternal valuation from $39 billion in
early 2022 to $10 billion at the begin-
ning of this year in response to an
industrywide market correction.
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
36
(The company recently raised its
internal valuation to $12 billion, ac-
cording to The Information.)
Fittingly, given Instacart’s logo,
Simo has been leading with a car-
rot rather than a stick. As soon as
the IPO was postponed, employees
who would have made money from
the listing were given cash bonuses.
Despite a few high-profile defectors
such as grocery chain Heinen’s, the
rate of attrition for stores on the plat-
form has stayed at a low 2% since
the pandemic began. Simo has also
worked to bring thousands of small
businesses onto the platform, hop-
ing to prove that it will not harm
their bottom lines. In addition, af-
ter embarking on a listening tour
with delivery workers, she instituted
measures including a reward system
for those who stay with the com-
pany and app features to prevent
“A LOT O F I N S U R A N C E
CO M PA N I E S
WOULD BENEFIT
FROM REIMBURSING
THE COST OF
F R E S H F O O D, B U T
T H E Y H A V E N’T
H A D A make it to Metrodora, they can or-
T E C H N O L O G Y
P A R T N E R T H A T
C A N S C A L E .”
SPRING 2023
tip-baiting. But it’s unclear how
much Instacart’s relationships with
delivery workers has improved. The
company doesn’t release data on its
attrition rate, but social media and
even Simo’s own Instagram are filled
with comments from employees an-
gry about the way Instacart treats
them. “There is incredible diversity
in our shoppers,” Simo says. “These
people fundamentally want flexi-
bility, and we want to provide that
along with the benefits and protec-
tion that they deserve.”
Instacart’s recent profit bump, a
39% rise in year-over-year revenue
last year (sales grew by 15% in 2022,
though average order size shrank),
stems partially from its advertis-
ing business, which uses data about
shoppers to sell ads in a way that’s
not too different from how Face-
book operates. Brands such as Phil-
adelphia cream cheese and Cheez-It
can advertise to Instacart consum-
ers as they shop—and even produce
custom content around ingredients,
giving users recipe ideas.
Recently, Simo has been apply-
ing her knowledge of healthcare to
her work at Instacart. The newly
launched Instacart Health lets cus-
tomers’ own doctors suggest items
they should buy, with part of the
healthy haul covered by medi-
cal insurance. The platform “uses
technology to solve the problem of
nutrition,” Simo explains, adding
that “a lot of insurance companies
would benefit from reimbursing the
cost of fresh food, but they haven’t
had a technology partner that can
scale to the entire country.”
Meanwhile, she’s also apply-
ing her knowledge of grocery de-
livery to her work at Metrodora:
Content filmed in Metrodora’s test
kitchen features chefs walking
viewers through recipes that adhere
to whichever diet their doctor may
say will alleviate their symptoms,
whether it’s gluten-free, sugar-free,
Hair and makeup: Reese Stockman
or carb-free. Ultimately, if they can’t
der through Instacart: Shopping
lists are included with Metrodora’s
videos so that all the groceries can
be ordered with one click. As Simo
might say, everyone wins.
Discover New
Perspectives

Compass Co.Design Impact Plugged In Modern CEO

DAI LY WE E K DAYS W EE K LY W E E K LY W E E K LY
Fast Company’s The latest innovations A weekly look at the Weekly tech insights, Insights for today’s CEO
trending stories in design brought to people and ideas news, and trends from from the desk of CEO
delivered to you daily you every weekday making an impact in Global Technology and Chief Content Officer
society and business Editor Harry McCracken Stephanie Mehta

E XP LORE FAST CO MPA N Y N E W SLE T TE RS : fastcompany.com/newsletters

Rebuilding a critical
American industry
1

3
Your world is built on semiconductors.
Purdue is safeguarding a secure supply of this critical tech by training
the next generation of semiconductor engineers and technicians.
 Flamin ’ Ho t C heetos a re t asty and tre ndy.
In Eva Longoria’ s n ew film—h er feature d irector ial
debut—t hey’r e also an inspirat ion.
By Jeff Beer Photographs by Josefina Santo s P. 4 1

Cheeto starts as cornmeal that’sr then m ixed with
water to create a batter. The batte moves through a
small tube into a machin e called a n ex truder,
EXPOSING THE CORNMEAL MIXTURE
to extreme heat and pressure that forces it
to pop into that familiar Cheeto shape. From
there, the Cheeto moves to the fryer, giving it
that crucial crunch. It’s then slathered with
cheese powder and spices, bagged, boxed,
and delivered to store shelves.
Of course, that leaves out an important
step: the magic dust, which is sprinkled
on by marketing and advertising execu-
tives. The PepsiCo-owned Frito-Lay has
spent hundreds of millions of dollars fig-
uring out how to position Flamin’ Hot
Cheetos—and it’s worked. The brand has
become an edible meme and a full-on
phenomenon, ubiquitous from grocery
stores to tween lunch boxes to TikTok vid-
eos. And in the process, Flamin’ Hot has
become not just a snack but an expression
of taste and identity.
Now the brand itself is about to receive
its own layer of magic dust, from Holly-
wood. Eva Longoria’s feature directorial de-
but, Flamin’ Hot, tells the story of Richard
Montañez, a former PepsiCo executive who
worked his way up from a Frito-Lay factory
janitor to a leading figure in the company’s
marketing department, and who claims
to have come up with the idea for Flamin’
Hot Cheetos. The film, which premiered at
SXSW in March and debuts on Hulu June 9,
has not been officially sanctioned by Frito-
Lay, and its plot skirts around certain ele-
ments of the product’s development that
are debated. Nevertheless, it offers the kind
of pop-culture treatment that has been
known to elevate a brand, and its origin
story, into the stuff of legend.
Although Flamin’ Hot Cheetos first
hit shelves in 1990, it was only in the past
decade that the brand really caught fire.
Frito-Lay launched a pop-up restaurant in
New York in 2017 called the Spotted Chee-
tah, which served dishes like Flamin’ Hot
Limón Chicken Tacos and Cheetos Mix-Ups
Crusted Chicken Milanese. A year later, the
company partnered with chef Roy Choi for
another pop-up, in Hollywood, called the
Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Spot. Today, in addi-
tion to 11 Flamin’ Hot Cheetos products,
Frito-Lay’s proprietary Flamin’ dust can be
found on Doritos, Ruffles, Lay’s, Funyuns,
Smartfood, and even in a limited edition
of Mountain Dew (all PepsiCo products).
Frito-Lay acknowledges that all of
this—the new products, the restaurant
pop-ups, the recipes it posts on its web-
site for dishes like the Flamin’ Hot Bacon
Ranch Cheeseball, the TikToks—stems
from the passion of people sharing their
creative ideas online, where a single Fla-
min’ Hot Cheeto–related video can draw
more than 16 million views. PepsiCo de-
clined to make a top executive available
for this story, but Frito-Lay’s chief market-
ing officer, Brett O’Brien, told Fast Com-
pany in February that encouraging people
to use Frito-Lay products as culinary ingre-
dients has become a big part of its overall
strategy. It’s a proven (remember the Frito
Pie?) and effective playbook: In PepsiCo’s
fourth-quarter 2022 financial results, the
company reported that Frito-Lay’s North
American business overall delivered 18%
organic revenue growth, and 17% for the
entire year. These gains are partially due
P. 4 2
to inflationary price increases, but snack-
ers are clearly undeterred.
The film’s debut, and Flamin’ Hot’s rise,
coincides with a change in American taste
buds, which have grown increasingly tol-
erant to spice. The shift has a generational
component. “Spicy flavors are being driven
by millennials and Gen Z, who are much
more multicultural,” says Darren Seifer, a
food and beverage industry analyst at an-
alytics firm NPD Group, “and a lot of the
food culture comes along with that, which
impacts the rest of the population.” Mean-
while, food memes and short-form cook-
ing videos have proliferated on Instagram,
YouTube, and TikTok, with “extreme”
foods—the ones that turn your mouth to
fire—drawing the most attention.
It’s a fortuitous trend line for Flamin’
Hot, which received positive early reviews.
Longoria says it has been scoring well with
Stylist: Charlene Roxborough; hair: Ken Paves; makeup: Elan Bongiorno using L’Oréal
under-25 males: “The focus group people
said, ‘I can’t believe it, you got the group
nobody gets. Unless it’s Marvel or Star
Wars, nobody gets that group.’ ”
For Longoria, however, the film is less a
biopic about a spicy snack than an inspir-
ing tale about Montañez, who represents to
her the struggles of many Latino Americans,
and their capacity when given sufficient op-
portunity. She was drawn to his story about
rising through the ranks at Frito-Lay. “The
theme of the film is how opportunity isn’t
distributed equally,” she says. “Your whole
life, certain people will say that certain jobs
aren’t for people like you. Ideas don’t come
from people like you. And he kept asking,
‘Why not?’ His naivete was his superpower.”

NOT LONG BEFORE DESPERATE
Housewives made her a household name,
while she was starring on The Young and
the Restless, Eva Longoria hosted a fund-
raiser for farmworkers’ rights that had
been organized by labor leader and activ-
ist Dolores Huerta. As Longoria delivered
her scripted remarks to the gathered crowd
from the stage, she had an awakening.
“Here I am, saying, ‘We have to help
farmworkers, because the rights we gained
in the 1960s have been dismantled!’ ” Lon-
goria recalls. “And I was like, ‘They have?’ ”
After she got off the stage, she pressed
Huerta for more information about what
she’d just said, and Huerta “talked to me
about the history of immigration, the de-
pendency on migrant labor, and all these is-
sues.” Then she remembers Huerta telling
her, “One day you’re going to have a voice,
so you better have something to say.”
Almost a decade later, as Desperate
Housewives was nearing the end of its eight-
season run, Longoria enrolled in a master’s
program in Chicano Studies at Cal State,
Northridge. “I needed to know where we’d
been to get a sense of where we should be
headed,” she says.
Since then, Longoria has devoted much
of her professional energy to empowering
the Latino community in the United States.
Her production company, UnbeliEVAble
Entertainment, has helped build a Latino
talent pipeline to Hollywood, working to
hire talent both in front of and behind the
camera for productions like Grand Hotel
and Devious Maids. Her philanthropy, the
Eva Longoria Foundation, raises money
to fund Latino-focused efforts in educa-
tion and entrepreneurship. Her PAC, La-
tino Victory Fund, supports Latino political
candidates, civic literacy, and get-out-the-
vote efforts in largely Latino communities.
Her nonprofit digital media platform, She
Se Puede/Poderistas, offers community
and support for Latinas. Even her cookware
line, Risa, is Spanish for “laughter” and in-
spired by Longoria’s memories of her par-
ents’ kitchen. And then there’s Flamin’ Hot.
Longoria was dedicated to telling Mon-
tañez’s story from his point of view. Flamin’
Hot is based on his 2021 memoir of the same
name, which he published a year after retir-
ing from Frito-Lay, following four decades
with the company. To gain his trust, she ven-
tured about five times to his home in Rancho
Cucamonga, California, urging him for fur-
ther details about his gang- and crime-filled
years before landing a job at Frito-Lay. “He’s
not that person anymore, so I had to show
him that I understood that, while also con-
vincing him that I needed to show that tra-
jectory,” she says. “I wanted to show him the
power of that journey. I’m a Latina. This is a
Latino story. If this doesn’t do well, the mes-
sage will be that stories about Latinos told by
Latinos don’t work. We get very few at-bats.”
Born in Corpus Christi, Texas—her
father was a U.S. Army veteran and her
mother a special education teacher—
F as t Com Longoria is a ninth-generation Mexican
pa
n American; her ancestors became Ameri-
y .c m
can when the United States annexed Texas
o
in 1845. As Longoria put it during her
speech at the 2016 Democratic National
Convention, “My family never crossed the
border, the border crossed us.”
P. Longoria, who studied kinesiology at
Texas A&M University–Kingsville before
4 pursuing acting, has always considered
4 herself both 100% American and 100%
Mexican, though she didn’t learn to speak
Spanish until 2012—and it’s her third lan-
guage, after English and French. She took
pride in her ability to, as she puts it, “strad-
dle the hyphen” in “Mexican-American,”
but her dual identity could also be a hur-
dle. In December, she told the podcast In
Her Shoes that when she would audition for
Latino roles, she couldn’t do enough of an
accent, and when she’d audition for white
roles, she was too “brown.”
After she became famous from Des-
perate Housewives in 2004, she was bom-
barded with requests from philanthropies
asking her to lend her voice (and face)
The film ’s to their causes. With the words from Do-
d e bu t , a nd lores Huerta still fresh in her mind, she
read Occupied America, by activist and
Flamin’ scholar Rudy Acuña, and began auditing
Hot ’s rise, his classes at Cal State, Northridge. Then
she enrolled for her master’s degree, which
c o i n c i d es w i t h she completed in 2013.
a c h a n ge Most of her classmates were writ-
i n Am e r i c a n ing their theses on immigration, and she
thought she might do the same. But then
t a s te b u d s . her adviser asked if immigration was going
 #hotcheetos on
TikTok has

2.2B
VIEWS

PERFORMANCE ART
TikTok artist
@sunday.nobody TACO BELL
built, from scratch, a MENU ITEM
3,000-lb concrete Originally launched
sarcophagus and sus- in 2020, the Flamin’ Hot
pended a bag of MARBLE SLAB Doritos Locos Taco featured
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos ICE CREAM a Flamin’ Hot hard shell. COSPLAY
inside “for future The chain popular The concoction returned in
civilizations to find,” with TikTok user “Hot Cheeto
in Texas and the 2021, alongside a new Samurai,” who dresses
the ingredients southeast U.S. part- flavor: Flamin’ Hot Cool
on a headstone. The up in a samurai costume
nered with Frito-Lay Ranch Doritos Locos Taco. created with Flamin’ Hot
four-month-long in 2021 to incorpo-
construction process Cheeto bags, has
rate crushed Flamin’ 2.7 million followers.
drew 10 million Hot Cheetos into an
views in 2022. His videos have attracted
ice cream flavor C RU N C HY 44.1 million likes.
and a special shake. TANGY C H I LI
FUS ION

BAKE D

S MARTFOOD
POPCORN
X X TR A
S PIT Z FL AM IN ’ HOT
S U N F LOWE R

RED ALL
S E E DS

AS TE RO I DS

OVER FUNYUNS
THE FLAMIN’ HOT ECOSYSTEM:
MINIS ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.
MOU NTAIN
DE W I LLUS TR ATIO N S BY
JAC KSON G I B B S

MAC AN D
CHEESE DORITOS

C RU N C HY
LI M Ó N

CORE
PRODU C TS
C RU N C HY

PU FFS

L AY ’ S

CLOTHING
Forever 21 released a CORP OR ATE
FRITOS
RESTAURANT
Flamin’ Hot capsule C ROS SOVE RS POP-UPS
collection in 2019 that RU F F LE S In 2017, Frito-Lay launched
included swimsuits, sweat- a New York pop-up restau-
shirts, tees, beach towels, rant called the Spotted
and more. Two years later, Cheetah, serving dishes like
streetwear brand Broken Flamin’ Hot Limón
Promises debuted a collec- H E AT-S E E KI NG Chicken Tacos. A year later,
tion of shirts, hoodies, COLL AB S the company partnered
sweatpants, and accesso- with chef Roy Choi for
ries to mark the limited- a pop-up in Hollywood
edition release of Mountain NAIL ART called the Cheetos Flamin’

104K
Dew’s Flamin’ Hot flavor. Beauty brand Dipwell Hot Spot.
released a $95 “dip kit” of
OUTE R Flamin’ Hot–branded nail
FOLLOWERS S PIC E products last March
on the official that included Flamin’ Hot–
@flaminhot TikTok scented cuticle drops
and “Fingers Stained Red”
dip powder.
to be her life’s work, and she had to think.
She decided she was more inspired to fol-
low her mother and focus on Latina edu-
cation. “When I told my adviser, she said,
‘What Latinas? Young Latinas? Old Lati-
nas? Who?’ I said, ‘Well, the ones who don’t
have access to secondary education.’ And
she asked, ‘What kind of education?’ She re-
ally made me narrow it down. So my thesis
ended up [being] about Latinas and the lack
of diversity in STEM fields.” Today, the Eva
Longoria Foundation has raised more than
$1.95 million for its microloan fund for
Latina entrepreneurs, helped more than
2,000 participants in its L.A.-based STEM
programs, and graduated more than 5,000
parents from programs that help them get
involved in their children’s education.
AS TRADITIONAL INTERRUPTIVE
advertising has become increasingly avoid-
able, brands have been getting ever more
creative. Product placement in shows,
films, and games (witness Vans, Gucci, and
Nike setting up shop inside of Roblox; see
page 22) has become a $23 billion industry.
So you’d think that an entire film revolv-
ing around a Frito-Lay product—with the
brand name even in the title—would give
Frito-Lay a massive appetite to be involved.
But it wasn’t—not in the filming, financing,
or marketing. At first, that might seem cu-
rious. But there’s a reason.
Flamin’ Hot was already in production
when the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy
investigation in May 2021 reporting that,
though Montañez may have shared ideas
with top Frito-Lay executives and wound
up working at the highest levels of the
company’s marketing department, he did
not, as he has claimed in speaking engage-
ments and in his memoir, actually gener-
F
ate the idea for Flamin’ Hot anything. The
“I set out concept, the article reported, was origi-
nated by Frito-Lay’s R&D, sales, and mar-
t o m a ke a keting teams when Montañez worked in
movie the factory. Other elements of Montañez’s
a ou t this
b story failed to check out as well, including
incredible the timeline of his interaction with then
CEO Roger Enrico in relation to the prod-
man and uct’s development and the fact that Fla-
h jou rney,
i s min’ Hot Cheetos rolled out regionally in
and t ha t small stores across Chicago, Detroit, Cleve-
land, and Houston in 1990, according to the
was L.A. Times, not in Montañez’s local market
a lw ay s m y of Southern California.
Longoria insists that she wasn’t fazed
vision.” by the exposé. “The L.A. Times article had
zero impact. Zero,” she says, reiterating
the film’s plot: “Richard told [PepsiCo] that
they were ignoring the Hispanic market.
He told them to make products for us. He
didn’t come up with the name and the rec-
ipe. His genius was in his grassroots mar-
keting and knowing his community. I never
set out to make a movie about the Flamin’
Hot Cheeto, I set out to make a movie about
this incredible man and his journey, and
that was always my vision.”
Frito-Lay seems surprisingly unruffled,
as well. A company spokesperson told Fast
Company: “Flamin’ Hot is Richard Monta-
ñez’s story, told from his point of view. His
contributions to Frito-Lay are highlighted
throughout the film, specifically his in-
sights and ideas on how to better serve His-
panic consumers and engage the Hispanic
community, a legacy PepsiCo continues
today. We are grateful to him for that and
hope people enjoy the film.” The Los An-
geles Times does cite a source who credits
Montañez for helping develop marketing
campaigns for its Sabrositas line, which
catered to the Latino market near Los An-
geles in the 1990s. These included Flamin’
Hot Popcorn and Flamin’ Hot Fritos and
a cinnamon-sugar variety of Doritos that
evoked a buñuelo. Frito-Lay CMO Rachel
Ferdinando told CNBC in 2020 that Monta-
ñez’s “insights into the Hispanic consumer
really helped us shape and think about how
we should talk to that consumer,” adding
7 that his insight “was something we relied
P. 4
on very heavily.”
Factual disputes are nothing new in the
pantheon of films “based on a true story,”
and movies revolving around business
history or corporate leaders are no excep-
tion. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak pub-
licly criticized the portrayal of his business
partner in 2015’s Steve Jobs. The Founder
m
co
n y. incorrectly credited Ray Kroc with the idea
of franchising McDonald’s. Ford v Fer-
a
p
t Com rari took liberties with how Lee Iacocca
as and Carroll Shelby first teamed up. And
as soon as the trailer (Continued on page 92)
 R I P
A S C O M PA N I E S
AND INVESTORS
ADOPT
E N V I R O N M E N TA L,
SOCIAL, AND
G OVERNANCE
(ESG) METRICS
T O B AT T L E
C L I M AT E
CHANGE AND
INCREASE
D I V E R S I T Y,
THEIR CRITICS
AREN’T
J U S T D E C RY I N G
“WOKE
C A P I T A L I S M .”

THEY’RE
FIGHTING
B AC K—
AND IT’S
WORKING.

BY C L I N T
R AINEY
I L L U S T R AT I O N S
BY T YC O

?

“WHEN DO THE HUMAN RIGHTS
tribunals begin for . . . Larry Fink?” Jason
Isaac asks the standing-room-only audi-
ence at the Texas Public Policy Founda-
tion’s annual summit.
Isaac, who’s the director of the conser-
vative think tank’s Life:Powered initiative,
which evangelizes that greater access to fos-
sil fuels will solve world poverty, is holding
court during a panel titled “ESG = Every-
one’s Suffering Guaranteed” and singling
out the chairman and CEO of $10 trillion as-
set manager BlackRock. For years, Fink and
his company have encouraged businesses to
embrace a “sense of purpose” beyond mak-
ing money for shareholders, and to con-
sider how climate change could affect their
potential for growth, in the belief it’ll help
BlackRock’s millions of customers accumu-
late wealth for retirement. But to Isaac, “the
policies they’re pushing are pushing us back
into poverty, and crushing the least among
us more than anyone else.” Heads nod ap-
provingly at the prospect of Fink being pun-
ished as an “enemy of the state.”
The session, held in early March in a
conference center in Austin, showcases
how Texas is leading the conservative
pushback against environmental, social,
and governance (ESG) investing, the pro-
gressive investment philosophy that has
risen to prominence in the last decade. As
the most influential ESG proponent in fi-
nance, BlackRock bears the brunt of these
Texans’ ire. Isaac shares the story of how
he excoriated several BlackRock executives
who visited his offices, taking them to task
for backing the UN’s recommendation to
phase out fossil fuels. That won’t mitigate
climate change, he recalls warning them,
“but does everything to increase the cost
of energy. And expensive energy hurts the
51 poor.” After the panel, Isaac tells me that
his goal is to defeat “this cartel that is col-
luding to influence companies outside of
the democratic process.”
Isaac helped draft the 2021 Texas law
that led the state to create a list of finan-
cial companies—mostly European banks
but also BlackRock—that boycott “certain”
energy businesses. Any governmental en-
tity, including state pension funds, must
divest from them if they don’t change their
policies. The law never mentions ESG, but
it puts banks and asset managers that con-
sider those principles in any of their fi-
nancial products on notice. Isaac and his
fellow panelist, Republican state Senator
Bryan Hughes—who’s been called the Ted
Lasso of the statehouse for his always smil-
ing demeanor—aren’t done. They preview
what they call a “fiduciary duty bill” that
Hughes introduces later in March. The bill
would prohibit officials managing pub-
lic pension funds from investing “with a
purpose of furthering social, political, or
ideological interests.” The broader scope
of the legislation reflects their intent to
hunt down every aspect of how the finan-
cial industry has been promoting ideals
beyond maximizing shareholder value—
and eliminate them.
If Texas were a sovereign nation, it’d be
the world’s ninth-largest economy. How
$330 billion gets invested—the value of the
funds impacted by Isaac and Hughes’s law—
is at stake in just this one state. But the coun-
terrevolution that started in the Lone Star
State has given rise to a nationwide rebellion
against the entire environmental, social,
and governance movement. Isaac’s 2021
bill was quickly copied and became the law
in West Virginia, Indiana, Oklahoma, and
Louisiana; by the start of the 2023 legisla-
tive session, there were at least 125 anti-ESG
bills percolating in 40 states. The anti-ESG
forces take credit for forcing the divestiture
of $5 billion in eight states, but they don’t
need to defund the major asset managers
to win. Merely the specter of being dragged
into these fights, of being labeled “woke,” is
scaring both investors and companies back
to where conservatives want them.
“If they’re gonna mess with money that
belongs to Texas retirees,” Hughes says,
prompting whoops from the audience,
“we’re gonna teach them some manners.”
T H E C U LT U R E WA R H A S C O M E T O
T H E C U LT U R E WA R
Americans’ 401(k)s, and with it a fight for
HAS COME TO
A M E R I C A N S’ the soul of corporate America. ESG is a
401(K)S, AND WITH broad set of considerations used by inves-
IT A FIGHT FOR
T H E S O U L O F C O R P O- tors and executives to assess the sustain-
R AT E A M E R I C A. ability and social impact of a company
with the goal that this positions it to gener-
ate better long-term value. ESG standards
are oracular, but at least according to 2019
guidelines published by Nasdaq, they con-
sist of 30 distinct metrics—10 each for en-
vironmental, social, and governance—that
include such things as emissions, gender
pay ratio, board diversity, and data privacy.
ESG may seem to be an odd target for
societal conflict, but where its adherents
discern virtuous initiatives that help their
companies do good, ESG’s critics see “woke
capitalism.” That sobriquet can be as broad
in its definition as ESG, but the belief is that
companies impose these efforts on soci-
ety in an authoritarian, and often super-
ficial, fashion. Anti-ESG advocates argue
that companies are using ESG to achieve
through the back door what U.S. lawmakers
could never accomplish through the front
door, from abortion access to climate pol-
icy. To them, ESG is not only an assault on
the economist Milton Friedman’s doctrine
that a corporation’s only obligation is to its
shareholders; this is an attempt to redefine
and subvert capitalism itself.
To learn who the key players are in this
fight, why they’re so hostile to those they see
as the opposition, and where they’re headed
next, Fast Company spent nearly three
months speaking to more than 30 members
of the movement (along with their pro-ESG
counterparts). The anti-ESG cadre has been
lampooned for using wokeness as a catch-
all for everything it hates, from M&M’s
marketing to the Silicon Valley Bank res-
cue. But that stance misses how Vivek Ra-
maswamy has surfed the wave of anti-ESG
sentiment to a (long-shot) bid for the 2024
Republican presidential nomination, as
well as the level of resentment among those
on the front lines, who represent a mélange
of voices on the political right. On podcasts,
in newsletters, and in the interviews for
this story, several repeated the same griev-
ance: After Trump’s victory in 2016, what
did they get? Tech censorship, more media
antagonism, students shouting them down,
and a summer’s worth of property destruc-
tion. But being disrespected by corporate
America—once a staunch ally—feels self-
inflicted, like they fell asleep at the wheel.
If conservatives are going to retake what
they feel they’ve lost, the anti-ESG rally cry
is: Why not start here?
This year, anti-ESG regulatory measures
are currently outpacing pro-ESG ones. The
top three asset managers—BlackRock, Van-
guard, and State Street, which together have
$20 trillion under management, equal to the
U.S. gross domestic product—are retreat-
ing from their vocal pro-ESG positioning.
(No company in the sights of the anti-ESG
movement agreed to speak on the record,
and BlackRock did not reply to multiple in-
terview requests.) In 2020, the U.S. arm of
the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance
(GSIA) identified $17.1 trillion in assets un-
der management that had been invested
with environmental, social, and governance
factors. When it released its next report, for
2022, that number dropped to $8.4 trillion.
The role that the anti-ESG movement has STRIVE IS NOT
A N T I - E S G,
played in that decline is impossible to quan-
I T ’ S “ P O S T - E S G .”
tify, but its mobilization at the top of the S I M P LY P U T ,
market has given it a significant tailwind. STRIVE PRESENTS
E S G A S A F A D T H AT
This backlash could have a cascading SOCIETY HAS
effect: Less money invested in ESG even- G R O W N T I R E D O F.
tually translates to fewer resources to ad-
dress such challenges as climate change
and gender pay disparities, in the same
way that Isaac laments to me how ESG led
to a 94% drop in private capital raised by
North American oil and gas companies be-
tween 2015 and 2021. Those who dismiss
the fight as the anti-woke mob’s latest shiny
object might be surprised to learn how fast
the political players and businesspeople in
this story—the ones leading the charge—
are learning from their mistakes and refin-
ing their attack.
“The anti-ESG folks are extremely well
resourced and well organized, and they
are tapping into every level of political and
governmental authority,” says Karl Racine,
Washington, D.C.’s former attorney general
who now leads the law firm Hogan Lovells’s
new practice focused on defending ESG ini-
tiatives. While in office, Racine
fought Big Tech, the Catholic
Church, and the Trump Orga-
nization. How do the anti-ESG
forces stack up? Easy answer,
he says: “They should be taken
very, very seriously.”
THE ANTI-ESG MOVE-
ment has two godfathers, one
from the political world and
one from finance, each of whom
started fighting ESG well before
even most Republicans recog-
nized there was a problem.
In 2010, Justin Danhof was a cherubic
young attorney fresh out of the University
of Miami School of Law, where he’d been a
member of the Federalist Society and the
Christian Legal Society. He’d just taken a
job at the Free Enterprise Project, revved
up by watching progressive groups pres-
sure businesses to adopt Obamacare be-
fore it had even become law. The group,
which held small shares of stock in com-
panies in order to file shareholder propos-
als criticizing corporate policies, was the
pioneer of conservatives using this tactic. 52
 Danhof was against, well, a lot: Pfizer,
for advertising in news outlets with a per-
ceived liberal bias; Walmart, for opposing
religious freedom; United Airlines, for cut-
ting ties with the NRA after the Parkland
school shooting. At Apple’s 2019 share-
holder meeting, he demanded that the
company add a conservative board mem-
ber, arguing that its focus on increasing
only racial and gender diversity, as opposed
to ideological diversity, was “a major risk
factor.” After CEO Tim Cook reassured him,
“We are open to people from all walks of
life,” more than 98% of Apple’s sharehold-
ers rejected Danhof’s proposal.
In fact, not a single one of Danhof’s res-
olutions ever passed. But that wasn’t nec-
essarily the point. “They move the Overton
window,” he tells me of his efforts, meaning
that they’re designed to alter the range of
political ideas that average people find ac-
ceptable. As ESG grew from $2.5 trillion at
the decade’s start to $17.1 trillion by 2020,
according to the U.S. arm of the GSIA, Dan-
hof watched the Overton window move left.
Progressive groups like As You Sow pushed
for board diversity as part of ESG, and “it
went from activist to mainstream” in half a
decade, Danhof says, with the likes of Gold-
man Sachs and Nasdaq championing it.
For Hal Lambert, a career financial
manager and Texas native who was the
first conservative investor to create a way
for others to shun corporations that of-
fended their values, the concern began
in 2016 with a decision by one company.
“Target announced it was opening up its
dressing rooms and restrooms to whatever
gender you identified as,” he says in a mea-
sured tone that, alongside his impeccable
blond coif, gives away that he’s a frequent
Fox Business and CNBC guest. “I knew that
was gonna be bad for the stock. So I sold
mine.” (Target’s stock did fall from $83.50
to $68 a share in the month after the com-
pany supported its transgender employees
and customers, but at the same time, Tar-
get was also dealing with class action law-
suits from its 2013 data breach and investor
skepticism for its private-label strategy.)
As Lambert, an active Republican fund-
raiser, watched ESG “starting to happen,”
he launched an exchange-traded fund
(ETF), or basket of stocks, to reflect his the-
sis that companies that adopted these ide-
als would suffer. Lambert’s Point Bridge
Capital introduced its fund in September
2017, with a ticker symbol that may have
been an inevitability: MAGA. He went so
far as to trademark the phrase “Politically
Responsible Investing,” a strategy that al-
lows people to “invest in companies that
align with your Republican political be-
liefs.” MAGA, a bundle of 150 stocks picked
from the S&P 500, is up 33% in the last five
years versus the S&P’s 51% gain for the
same period.
Over the past decade, conservatives have
54
grown angrier, as a class of interlopers—
these new “stakeholders” that include ev-
eryone from employees to consumers—felt
empowered by CEOs like Fink to nudge
executives to engage in social issues.
Businesses then received ESG credit for
supporting same-sex marriage, the MeToo
movement, and immigrants’ rights. After
all, Fink asserted that “profits and pur-
pose are inextricably linked” in his now-
famous 2018 letter to CEOs. A year later,
the Business Roundtable formally en-
dorsed companies balancing the interests
of shareholders with those of employees
and communities. After businesses vocally
embraced the social justice movement
that crescendoed following the murder of
George Floyd in the spring of 2020, “the
whole country woke up to what was go-
ing on in these corporations,” says Scott
Shepard, who worked with Danhof at Free
Enterprise Project and is now its director.
Several people on each side of the ESG
debate also point to 2021’s shareholder fight
at Exxon-Mobil as a seminal moment. An
activist with just 0.02% of Exxon’s shares
convinced BlackRock and other firms with
voting control to support its bid for three
board seats to push the company to re-
duce emissions.
The world of anti-ESG at the time was
a rather small club: mostly Danhof, Lam-
bert, Isaac, some of Isaac’s oil friends who
suddenly couldn’t get bank loans, and a
few canceled corporate executives. In the
ensuing couple of years as the anti-ESG
movement has grown, progressive groups
have sought to paint it as a shadowy con-
spiracy. But the truth is, it all seems to
operate relatively out in the open. Lam-
bert knows Isaac and all the Texas Re-
publicans. “I started alerting politicians a
number of years ago that [pro-ESG forces
are] trying to defund our energy sector,”
he says. Isaac tells me that he has spent
time with Danhof. Dark money conserva-
tive funders such as Charles Koch, Leon-
ard Leo, and Peter Thiel are involved in
the effort to counter ESG, and Thiel has
known Vivek Ramaswamy since Rama-
swamy was at Yale Law School. But there
ES G FA N S ’ B ES T
is no puppet master. H O P E M AY
So when Lambert decided, in 2021, not B E T H E C O N S E R VA -
T I V E I N D U S T RY
to publish his book-length takedown of
TRADE GROUPS
wokeism, he knew whom to offer its killer T H A T H AV E S P O K E N
title. “Unlike Vivek, I had a full-time job O U T AGA I N S T
P RO P OS E D A N T I-
to do,” he says, chuckling. “I said he could E S G L AW S A S
have Woke, Inc.” A N T I – F R E E M A R K E T.
 “ WE ARE HUNGRY
for purpose and mean-
ing at a point in our na-
tional history when the
things that used to fill
that void—faith, patriot-
ism, hard work, family—
have disappeared from
modern American life,”
says Ramaswamy, calmly
pacing the ballroom
stage during the Texas
Policy Summit’s closing-
day breakfast keynote.
“We instead replace that
void with wokeism, transgenderism, clima-
tism, and COVID-ism.”
A decent-size crowd has gathered at
8 a.m. on a Friday to hear from the newest
2024 presidential candidate on the 10th
day of his campaign. Not even the previous
night’s storms—tornadoes and softball-size
hail, on the heels of last week’s 90-degree
highs—could prevent folks from coming
to hear Ramaswamy spread the anti-woke
word. The 37-year-old Indian American has
parlayed being young, provocative, telege-
nic, successful—and anti-ESG—into his bid
for national office.
As he gets into his stump speech, he re-
lays the story that led him here. He was CEO
of a biotech company called Roivant Sci-
ences, which had a $7 billion valuation and
was working on drugs for everything from
psoriasis to prostate cancer, when his em-
ployees asked him to support Black Lives
Matter in the wake of George Floyd’s mur-
der. He declined (“I listened and didn’t say
much in response”), three board members
quit, and Ramaswamy decided to leave
rather than say something he didn’t believe.
“I chose to step down,” he tells the audi-
ence, “to focus not on prostate cancer, but
to focus on a different kind of cancer . . . a
cultural cancer in America.”
He published Woke, Inc., which be-
came a bestseller, then turned to entre-
preneurial opportunities in what’s known
in right-wing circles as the “parallel econ-
omy,” businesses designed to serve indi-
viduals who disagree with the policies of
such companies as YouTube, Starbucks,
and PayPal. (Their alternatives are, respec-
tively, Rumble, Black Rifle Coffee, and a
payment processor actually named Par-
allel Economy.) Ramaswamy teamed up
with Anson Frericks, who was then presi-
dent of Anheuser-Busch’s sales and distri-
bution arm, to kick around ideas. The two
had attended the same Jesuit high school
in Cincinnati, where they were mock-trial
teammates. “We’ve been debating for, I
dunno, 20 years,” Frericks tells me, jocu-
larly adding, “and I guess advocating for
people to vote for us.” (Ramaswamy’s team
agreed to an interview with Fast Company,
but it never happened amid the campaign.)
Frericks explains that he shared Ra-
maswamy’s frustration watching large
mainstream brands try to manifest a so-
cial purpose beyond their products, em-
ulating progressive pioneers like Toms
Shoes and Warby Parker. He tells me a story
about buying Oreos for his kids and how
the package displayed a large seal boast-
ing that the company uses 100% sustain-
ably sourced cocoa. Frericks says he asked
a friend who works on the Oreo brand, “ ‘Do
people really care about this?’ He was like,
‘No, people just care that the cookie tastes
good. But we’re being forced to adopt all
these causes.’ ”
They explored opportunities for creat-
ing an anti-woke Nike (the company had
supported Colin Kaepernick’s protests),
or better yet, an anti-woke Coca- Cola
(someone had leaked its internal diversity
course, which told employees to “try to be
less white”). Ultimately, the duo, who had
both spent time early in their careers in fi-
nance, saw their best opportunity in start-
ing an alternative asset management firm,
at precisely the moment ESG experienced a
banner 2021. In addition to record inflows,
one-third of all shareholders that year
voted to support ESG proposals at annual
meetings, per the Sustainable
Investments Institute.
Ramaswamy and Frericks
took a minute to settle on Strive
as the name of the brand, but
their ambitions were always
clear: They code-named the
company “Whitestone.”
R A M A S W A M Y L E F T
Strive’s board when he an-
nounced his presidential run.
Frericks cites the decision as
proof that they’re embodying
the firm’s “profits, not politics”
mission—unlike their competition. “Larry
Fink and [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Di-
mon, they’re using other people’s money
to act like they’re president,” he notes.
Yet Ramaswamy has become the face of
the anti-ESG movement and is campaign-
ing in part on the ideas baked into Strive.
“Frankly,” Frericks replies, “we think it’s an
opportunity for us to get more of our mes-
sage out there.”
Strive continues to emphasize its apo-
litical message, but in private events, team
members have started to frame that the
firm is not anti-ESG, it’s “post-ESG.” Sim-
ply put, Strive presents ESG as a fad that
society has grown tired of. The firm em-
phasizes what it is for, not what it’s against.
Strive doesn’t fixate on corporate activ-
ism run amok; it stresses national unity
through depoliticization, echoing Ra-
maswamy’s campaign. Strive isn’t against
green energy; it’s pro-U.S. energy, even
solar, wind, and geothermal. Sure, Exxon
is the largest holding in its flagship en-
ergy fund, which happens to be named
DRLL (pronounced “drill”), but any com-
pany could be included so long as it rejects
“shortsighted political agendas” such as
net-zero or diversity commitments.
Last year, when Ramaswamy was still
executive chairman, he crisscrossed the
country to meet with officials and fund
managers from South Carolina to Alaska to
share this perspective. States later divested
almost $1 billion from BlackRock.
Democrats and progressive watchdog
groups have decried Ramaswamy’s tour
as a conflict of interest: Was it ethical for
Strive executives to advise states to with-
draw funds from BlackRock—then compete
for that money for its own financial prod-
ucts? When Strive won its first state client,
the Indiana Public Retirement System, last
November, it only reinforced the idea that
Ramaswamy used his conservative-world
celebrity to meet with state officials, then
set in motion divestments that could flow
to Strive. In March, Indiana media discov-
ered that the state had agreed to pay Ra-
maswamy $4,000 an hour for his consulting
services, leading the Indiana House finance
committee’s top Democrat, Greg Porter, to
wonder if Strive’s “hysteria over ESG” was “a
pretense to grift public retirement systems.”
Strive also launched Strive Advisory
earlier this year to help investors vote on
shareholder issues. The advisory business,
sometimes called shareholder or proxy ser-
vices, gives both the financial and political
arms of the anti-ESG movement yet an-
other way to blunt ESG’s gains. Generally
speaking, this financial industry backwa-
ter serves the goal of making sure that the
ultimate shareholders—workers saving for
retirement—aren’t snookered by company
management into okaying, for example, big
executive pay raises. The two major play-
ers, Glass Lewis and Institutional Share-
holder Services (ISS), control more than
90% of the business and have supported
ESG initiatives.
In January, Strive Advisory started
to engage with companies and state
pension-fund managers to offer a differ-
ent point of view. Just two weeks after it
launched, 21 Republican state attorneys
general sent Glass Lewis and ISS a letter—
addressed to “woke (Continued on page 94)
 WORLD CHA

P.5 6 • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3

ILLUSTRATION
BY JOSE BERRIO
NGING IDEAS
IF THE WORLD’S MOST PRESSING PROBLEMS
are interrelated, as a panel of UN climate scien-
tists recently reminded us, then the solutions can
be too. From sustainable leather that helps boost
farmers’ income to repurposed shipping contain-
ers that bring digital tools to the developing world,
these projects grapple with intractable issues in clever and unex-
pected ways. The following pages honor 45 category winners and
scores of others for devising ways to improve—and protect—our world.
 GENERAL EXCELLENCE

USING ROCK
TO PULL CARBON
FROM THE
AT M O S P H E R E

LITHOS CARBON

Basalt rock reacts

with rainwater
and locks up
atmospheric CO2
as bicarbonate.

The rock dust 4

naturally helps
regenerate
soil, increasing
crop yields.

3
5

Lithos measures
the carbon
removed, with
the help of Yale
and Georgia
Tech researchers.

Researchers
trace the carbon
as it flows off
crops, through
rivers, and into
the ocean.
TO COMBAT RISING TEMPER ATURES, WE
not only need to reduce carbon emissions
5
but also remove billions of tons of carbon
from the atmosphere. A variety of enter-
Bicarbonates prises are focusing on removing carbon
become corals
and shells and from the air, but many of their approaches
are permanently employ expensive technologies and will
locked away on take years to have any meaningful effect.
the ocean floor.
Startup Lithos Carbon, however, is fo-
cusing on the land, and a natural tool: ba-
salt, a black igneous rock that’s common
on volcanically active islands like Hawaii
and Iceland. Lithos recycles existing ba-
salt dust—a quarrying by-product—and
spreads it over crop land. When rainwa-
ter mixes with the basalt dust, it triggers a
chemical reaction that captures and locks
up CO2 as bicarbonate. The bicarbonate
then flows into rivers and the open ocean,
where it nourishes coral reefs and the
shells of crabs, oysters, and other organ-
isms. When those creatures die, the car-
bon is permanently sequestered as rock
on the ocean floor. “We’re sucking carbon
dioxide out of the atmosphere and stor-
ing it permanently for 10,000 to 100,000
years,” says Mary Yap, Lithos’s cofounder
and CEO.

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN PETERSEN

 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.5 9
2 timated 23% of deforestation
PALM OIL IS FOUND IN 50% OF
packaged items on supermar-
ket shelves, including sham-
poo, ice cream, lip balm, and
laundry detergent, and the
$60 billion industry is expected
to quadruple by 2050. To pro-
duce palm oil, tropical forests
are slashed and burned. To-
gether with soy, palm oil drives
nearly 20% of deforestation. In
Indonesia, the world’s top palm
oil producer, palm oil planta-
tions have accounted for an es-
PALM OIL
ALTERNATIVE
3 cells. (Yeasts have previously
Lithos says it’s on track to sequester
10,000 metric tons this year, at a fraction
of the cost of other methods that require
pricey machines. The company works
with both family and corporate farms
across the U.S. Lithos provides basalt free
to farmers, financing the project by sell-
ing carbon credits to tech companies, and
Nico189 (Palm Oil Alternative)
unlike many other treatments that can
damage or poison the soil, basalt helps
to regenerate and de-acidify soils. So far,
crop yields have increased by as much as
C16 BIOSCIENCES
47%. “This process really is a no-brainer
for farmers,” Yap says. —Talib Visram
and contributed to the 2015
fires that caused $16 billion in
damage. That canopy loss is
linked to not only greenhouse
gas emissions but also habi-
tat loss. Palm oil trees can only
grow in the tropics, the most
biodiverse region on earth.
“It doesn’t make sense that
we’re destroying rainforests
to make a vegetable oil,” says
Shara Ticku, cofounder and
CEO of C16 Biosciences, a bio-
tech company on a mission to
decarbonize consumer prod-
ucts. She asks, “Can we use bi-
ology instead of agriculture?”
In November 2022, C16 Bio-
sciences launched Palmless,
a consumer-facing brand for
palm oil alternatives. Palm-
less uses a precision fermenta-
tion process similar to brewing
beer; as yeast grows in steel
tanks, oil grows in the yeast’s
been used to produce biofuel
oils, too.)
This oil is a key ingredi-
ent in Palmless’s first product,
Save the F#$%ing Rainfor-
est Nourishing Oil, a skin and
hair oil launched in February
2023. The beauty industry is
“hungry” for this kind of in-
novation, Ticku says, because
at least 70% of all cosmet-
ics are estimated to contain
palm oil and palm oil deriv-
atives. Along with its own
products, Palmless will make
ingredients to replace palm
oil in established CPG brands.
—Kristin Toussaint
NATURE
 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.6 0
NE W STREE T VENDOR CO OLING C ARTS
from Trane Technologies address multi-
ple problems simultaneously.
By keeping produce cool, they can
help reduce the nearly 1 billion metric
tons of food that gets discarded every
year, much of it winding up in landfills,
where the UN estimates it contributes
10% of global climate-warming gases as
it decomposes.
DEVELOPING- Keeping healthful food fresh longer,
WORLD TECHNOLOGY
the carts sustain viable sources of nutri-
tion at a time when, according to the World
REDUCING Food Programme, more than 800 million
FOOD people are unsure where their next meal
WA S T E A N D is coming from.
In extending food freshness, the carts
HELPING
can provide a huge economic benefit to
STREET
the more than 25 million street vendors
VENDORS Trane estimates are operating in develop-
ing economies, lowering the cumulative
TRANE
T EC H N O LO G I E S
ILLUSTRATION BY JOSE BERRIO
$75 billion annual loss they incur when
the food they sell goes bad.
Trane’s passive cooling carts rely on
a canopy that’s made from a film devel-
oped by SkyCool Systems. The film re-
flects sunlight to prevent fresh produce
from overheating, passively cooling the
area beneath by up to 10 degrees Celsius
and saving food from spoiling and being
tossed out before it can be sold.
“It doesn’t require any change in be-
havior, which was a really important part
of the solution,” says Dominique Silva,
Trane’s head of innovation initiatives.
The company has been testing a pilot
program in Kolar, India, which led to a re-
cent order of 300 carts, says Trane senior
director Zubin Varghese. “It has a great
impact not only on food waste,” he says,
“but also the [income] of people who are
selling the food, especially in places like
India, where most of the last mile is done
on the carts.”
Trane is now working with the United
Nations to expand adoption of the cool-
ing carts to other locations beyond India.
—Jessica Bursztynsky
Location is everything
CLEANER (AND
QUIETER)
TRANSPORTATION
CONSTRUCTION
EQUIPMENT
B O B C AT
THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
has a notoriously large car-
bon footprint, nearly 40% of
global emissions. In a move
to address its own contribu-
tions to that, Bobcat last year
launched the T7X, the world’s
first all-electric compact track
loader, a commonly used con-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY NICO189
struction vehicle with tracks
instead of wheels and a large
bucket in front for loading
heavy materials. Not only has
Bobcat replaced the main die-
sel engine with electric power,
but it’s electrified the hydrau-
lic system as well, reducing the
amount of potentially toxic
fluids the system requires.
The T7X runs on a gallon
and a half of propylene glycol
coolant (rated safe by the FDA)
and less than 2 ounces of gear-
box oil as opposed to the nearly
60 gallons of fluids required
to run a conventional diesel
loader. These improvements
eliminate both air and noise
pollution on job sites, which of-
ten are located in densely pop-
ulated urban areas. The vehicle
is also comprised of 40% fewer
components, which makes
maintenance significantly eas-
ier and reduces the number of
parts that might need to be re-
placed, another environmen-
tal benefit.
Sunbelt Rentals, one of the
 ART AND DESIGN

UNIVERSITY OF

H AWA I I AT M Ā N O A

T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F H AWA I I I S
spread across 10 campuses on
four islands that span a distance of
330 miles. With a total enrollment
of 48,373 students, the state’s only
public university is one of the na-
tion’s most racially diverse campuses, and 21% of the
student body identifies as Native Hawaiian.
In 2018, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa began
to explore ways to honor the heritage of Native Ha-
waiians. The result—a new system of signs to help
visitors navigate the 320-acre campus—is an elegant
tribute to the legacy of the once sovereign nation. It
is the first wayfinding system to include an Indige-
nous language at a U.S. university.
Each sign is paired with a medallion that includes
a QR code synced with a map accessible by smart-
phone. But the signs are also situated to point the
visitor’s gaze toward a significant location that can’t
be seen from the valley the campus sits in—like an-
other island, the Wailele Spring, or even Oahu’s iconic
Diamond Head (Lē’ahi.) The goal is to inform people
about significant landmarks around (and beyond) the
campus, anchoring the site in its Hawaiian context.
“The land is their relative,” Brian Strawn, a principal
investigator for the new wayfinding and signage proj-
ect, says of Indigenous Hawaiian people. “They come
from the land, so it’s literally about hoping to make
them more curious about the natural world around
them.” —Elissaveta M. Brandon

country’s largest equipment

rental companies, has pur-
chased a fleet of these vehicles
for its California locations, al-
lowing prospective customers
to try before they buy. Bobcat
global innovation VP Joel Hon-
eyman says that people in the
construction industry are skep-
tical of “sustainable” options.
“That’s just the world we live
in,” he says. “So we need to do
a lot of education with people.
Get them in the seat, have them
try it out.” —Aimee Rawlins
 URBAN DESIGN

F R O M A S P H A LT
WA S T E L A N D
T O V E R DA N T PA R K

SASAKI
1

ONE OF THE WORLD’S

most remarkable ur-
ban transformations is
now underway in Ath-
ens, Greece. Over the
next decade, the city’s
decommissioned airport will be turned
into the 650-acre Ellinikon Metropolitan
Park, designed by the landscape archi-
tecture firm Sasaki and interspersed with
21st-century neighborhoods.
Shuttered in 2001, the airport has been
a physical representation of Greece’s ups
and downs. The country built stadiums
at the airport for the 2004 Olympics, then
fell into decline in the long debt crisis that
followed. Later, airport terminal buildings
and Olympic venues both became emer-
gency shelters for a flood of migrants. 2
Soon, Ellinikon will become the larg-
est coastal public park in Europe, featur-
ing more than 30 miles of walking paths
and 10 miles of cycle routes, four large
playgrounds, an 18,000-person capacity
amphitheater, and a massive beach, all
accessible by transit.
It took years of negotiations to make
the park’s privately led development plan
a reality. A coalition of private developers
got the rights to build on about half the
site for free in exchange for constructing
and operating the park and its related in-
frastructure: the rare public-private part-
nership in which most of the investment
is private, with long-term public benefits.
That development model enabled Sasaki
to pursue an aggressively resilient design. 1 2
The park will absorb more carbon emis-
sions than it creates and feature a native
BEACHFRONT N AT I V E L A N D S C A P E
landscape adapted to Athens’s extreme CONNECTION The park will eventually be
weather. Once 80% asphalt, the site will An oceanfront tram line makes carbon negative, absorbing
soon be 80% green space. The park’s first this metropolitan-scale park more emissions than it produces.
and its new public beach easily Part of that will be due
phase, about half its total area, should be accessible to Athenians and to its climate-friendly native
finished in 2025. “We see this as a park for to commuters heading into the landscape, inspired
1,000 years,” says Sasaki lead designer Mi- city from the southern suburbs. by the Greek countryside.
chael Grove. —Nate Berg

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN PETERSEN


3 4
TRANSIT ACCESS
The park and its new neighbor-
hoods will be within walking
distance of a subway station.
3
A M P H I T H E AT E R
With room for 18,000, it’s a rare
public gathering space for Athens.
“Most of the large open areas
are preserved antiquities or
historic spaces,” says Chris Hardy,
a senior associate at Sasaki.
W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.6 5
4
5
NEW NEIGHBORHOODS
Woven through the park will be
several mixed-use neighborhoods
for thousands of residents. “There’s
this active interplay between
development and landscape
that’s always going to be happen-
ing,” says Sasaki’s Michael Grove.
 NEARLY HALF THE WORLD’S P OP-
ulation still has no internet access,
which means that some of the peo-
ple most in need of basic services,
such as healthcare and water, have
trouble accessing them.
Dell Technologies has responded by converting
old shipping containers into what it calls Solar Com-
munity Hubs—customizable destinations, powered
by solar panels on the structure’s roof, providing tech-
nology to help meet a community’s needs.
The first Solar Community Hub was launched in
March 2022, in Boa Esperança, deep in the Brazilian
Amazon. The hub became an educational center that
also enables residents to track the deforestation in an
area that has lost 19% of its tree cover since 2000. Dell
worked with the Foundation for Amazon Sustainabil-
ity to install equipment, including drones and envi-
ronmental monitors. Between March 3 and March 10,
2023, more than 200 alerts about tree loss were posted
from Boa Esperança.
Dell has opened three Solar Community Hubs in
Brazil and South Africa since, with plans to open two
more in Egypt (focusing on career and life skills) and
one in Australia (focusing on preserving and protect-
ing Aboriginal art and culture).
“We’re revamping, adjusting, and bringing the
Source: Facts and Figures 2022
benefits of what we saw last year to the network,” says
Ahmed Houcine Faik, manager of the global Solar
Community initiative at Dell. “We see this as planting
a seed, and creating an ecosystem to provide as much
value as possible.” —Chris Stokel-Walker
ILLUSTRATION BY NICO189
Transforming
youth sports

1
WORLD CHANGING IDEAS • P.68
EGG WHITES CAN EXPAND SIX
to eight times in volume when
whisked or whipped, and they
help to bind ingredients to-
gether. They make our foods
fluffy, foamy, or even sticky.
Those functionalities are a
FOOD
product of specific proteins—
the most abundant of which
is called ovalbumin—which
E G G W H I T E S T H AT
can’t easily be replicated with
DON’T REQUIRE plant-based alternatives.
CHICKENS
ONEGO BIO
ILLUSTRATION BY JOSE BERRIO
Ovalbumin is “one of na-
ture’s wonders,” says Maija
Itkonen, CEO of biotech com-
pany Onego Bio. But eggs are
also, she notes, rife with envi-
ronmental and ethical issues:
Cage-free hens account for just
34% of all egg-laying flocks,
and though responsible for
fewer emissions than proteins
like beef, 86% of eggs are still
produced in carbon-intense
industrial-farm settings, total-
ing some 200-plus million met-
ric tons of CO2 each year.
Onego Bio, which launched
in February 2022 after it spun
out from the VTT Technical
Research Centre of Finland,
uses precision fermentation
to make an animal-free egg
white called “bioalbumen.”
It currently comes as a pow-
der and can easily fit into ex-
isting production systems;
egg white powders in general
are common for use in every-
thing from confectionaries to
protein supplements. Onego
Bio says its chicken-free egg
whites have an environmen-
tal impact that’s up to 90%
lower than egg whites from
hens. Because bioalbumen is
genetically identical to oval-
bumin, it’s not an egg white
alternative: It’s the real thing.
That means it has all the same
properties crucial for foods—
and other products; egg white
proteins are used in cosmetics
to tighten skin, in the fining of
wine, and in pharmaceuticals.
The company is partner-
ing with Perfect Day, a preci-
sion fermentation leader that
makes milk proteins sans cows,
to help scale up and commer-
cialize bioalbumen. Plans for a
factory with an output equiva-
lent to 2 million chickens are in
the works. —KT
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 Average daily home water use
by each American

LATIN AMERICA

PUTTING LOW-INCOME
RESIDENTS ON THE MAP

A M E R I C A N A S , F AV E L A B R A S I L ,

G 1 0 F AV E L A S , G O O G L E

82 GALLONS
M A N Y O F U S TA K E S T R E E T A D -

+
dresses for granted. We use our
addresses to order food and other
goods, and to secure access to wa-
ter and utilities. But more than
15 million Brazilians are not so for-
tunate. Living in the improvised housing complexes
of densely populated favelas, many low-income resi-
dents lack a traditional address and can’t access even
Grade
the most basic modern services. United States
The Brazilian e-commerce company America- received for
nas joined forces with the NGO G10 Favelas and the WATER its wastewater
treatment
startup Favela Brasil to address the problem through system
a partnership with Google, leveraging the tech giant’s O N - S I T E WAT E R
existing Open Location Code technology to provide
R E C YC L I N G
a coded and searchable address for every location in
the world. EPIC CLEANTEC
Launched in January 2022, Plus Codes Brazil cre-
ates a digital address, allowing GPS to identify the
exact location by latitude and longitude. These ad-

Sources: United States Geographical Survey, Estimated Use of Water in the

United States in 2015 (82 gallons stat); Infrastructure Report Card, ASCE
dresses, accurate to within 1 meter, can be used by
favela residents not only for e-commerce deliveries
(the addresses become visible in Google Maps and
Waze) but also to register at health centers or access
vital services, such as water or electricity.
Favela Brasil Xpress then works with Google to
map the area, and Google produces signs that include W I T H M U C H O F T H E WO R L D
address coordinates that can be attached to buildings. suffering from lack of precipi-
Since many people living in favelas don’t use cars or tation, you don’t have to live in
trucks, the maps include roads used by bicycles and Arizona to have become more
“tuk tuks” (a type of electric tricycle). cognizant of the water swirling
More than 1,700 addresses have been mapped so down the drain or exiting the
far in the Paraisópolis favela, facilitating as many as toilet. In this era of the mega-
5,000 deliveries a day. —Andrea Paola Hernández drought, Epic Cleantec’s One-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY NICO189

Percentage of water on Earth that is
usable and available freshwater
0.5%
Percentage of global
household wastewater
discharged in 2020
without safe treatment
45%
(D+ grade, 15% stat); World Meteorological Association (0.5%, 3.6 billion);
Water System allows buildings
to recycle water on-site (a re-
WHO/UNICEF (45%); FAO (population vs. water use); EPA (20%)
quirement that many cities are
enacting on large buildings),
lowering the amount of new
water that needs to be drained
from reservoirs.
Originally conceived as
part of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation’s Reinvent the Toi-
let Challenge, the device uses
a fine-mesh screen to filter out
solids from liquids. The liq-
uids are filtered and treated,
WORLD CHANGING IDEAS • P.71
BILLION
Water use has
been growing
at more than
twice the rate of
population in
the last century.
and water is sent back into the
building. By law, water treated
on-site can be used only in
non-potable applications,
which can amount to 95% of a
building’s water use: flushing
toilets, irrigating plants, or fill-
ing cooling towers. The solids
are taken off-site and turned
into soil, which the company
will donate to local parks de-
partments and also make
available for sale in bags. One-
Water System also uses heat
Global population with inadequate access
to water for at least one month in 2018—a
number expected to reach 5 billion by 2050
20%
15%
Percentage of
wastewater
facilities that Percentage of water the EPA
have reached estimates could be saved if
or exceeded everyone used water-efficient
their designed fixtures and appliances
capacities
POPULATION
WATER
USE
from the roughly 80-degree per year from a single building.
wastewater to pre-warm new A modular version, launched in
water, which comes into build- November 2022, is even easier
ings at around 55 degrees. By to deploy. The company now
transferring just a few degrees has ongoing projects in Califor-
of heat, the process can reduce nia, Hawaii, and Texas.
the amount of energy needed “We are doing for the wa-
to heat water by 35% to 40%. ter world what solar did for
The company’s first proj- energy,” says Epic Cleantec co-
ect was in a 40-story high-rise founder and CEO Aaron Tarta-
in San Francisco in 2021, reus- kovsky, “moving away from big
ing up to 7,500 gallons of wa- giant energy plants to smaller,
ter per day from showers and distributed even at home
laundry—2.5 million gallons scale.” —Morgan Clendaniel
 1 2

Pineapples are After the

harvested in pineapple
the Philippines. harvest, farmers
separate
the leaves.

Piñafelt goes to
Europe, where
specialist workers
color and finish it.
And finally,
Piñatex is ready
for the fashion
and upholstery
industries.

PR FIRMS
AND MARKETING
AGENCIES

MAKING
L E AT H E R
E ACH TON OF HARVESTED
FROM
pineapples generates three
PINEAPPLE tons of leaves that go to waste.
WA S T E New York creative agency
L&C partnered in 2020 with
L &C N E W YO R K food giant Dole to address this
AND DOLE
problem and together with
marketing firm Peppercomm
found a solution in Ananas
Anam, the company created
by textile entrepreneur Car-
men Hijosa to commercialize
her patented process for turn-
ing fibrous pineapple leaves
into a vegan leather called Pi-
ñatex. Ananas Anam (ananas is
a Spanish word for pineapple)
had been operating for seven
 WORLD CHANGING IDEAS • P.73

3 4

Workers remove The fibers

the fibers from the dry in the sun.
leaves using
semiautomatic
machines.

6 5

Then workers mix After drying, it’s

the fibers with time to clean
a thermoplastic the fibers. The
derived from corn. purification
The fibers go process removes
through a contaminants
mechanical pro- and leaves a
cess that binds bundle of soft
the two together, and downy
resulting in a fibers, ready for
nonwoven mesh the next stage.
called Piñafelt.

years and needed more leaves.
The partnership, made official
in 2021, launched with an ed-
ucational film that captured
both the problem and the Piña-
tex solution and garnered more
than 1.7 billion impressions.
Piñatex has been used by
1,000 brands worldwide, in-
cluding Hugo Boss, H&M, and
Nike (with its Happy Pineap-
ple shoe collection). “It’s fan-
tastic that something that was
considered waste was on a Nike
sneaker,” says Gian Lanfranco,
L&C’s cofounder and CEO.
M e a nw h i l e, p i n e a p p l e
farmers have been given a
new stream of income, and
Dole has reduced its overall
fruit waste. Notably, the com-
pany has also become part of
the pop-culture conversation.
As Lanfranco says: “Before,
[Dole] was talked about in su-
permarkets; now it was men-
tioned in Vogue.” —EB

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN PETERSEN

 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.7 4

WORLD-CHANGING CLIMATE FINANCE POLITICS

COMPANY Spectra Gotong Royong AND POLICY
OF THE YEAR GHGSat Share Program New Practice Lab
Dell Technologies A fleet of satellites GoTo New America
WINNERS A series of projects in- that tracks methane, A program that A research and
cluding solar-powered a potent greenhouse enabled hundreds design lab that helps
shipping containers gas, so leaks can of thousands of ensure public policy
that bring digital tools be quickly stopped unbanked drivers solutions reach the
to the developing to become GoTo people who need them
world, and a laptop CONSUMER PRODUCTS shareholders
designed to be easily Diamonds RAPID RESPONSE
disassembled and HEALTH
by Pandora Response to the
repaired or recycled Pandora MC2 handheld x-ray Horn of Africa
A sustainable jewelry OXOS Medical malnutrition crisis
ADVERTISING line created by pairing A device that uses UNICEF USA
Native Sportscasters lab-grown diamonds 80% less radiation An effort to procure
We Believers and with recycled metals and employs AI for and distribute lifesav-
Corona diagnostics, ensuring ing ready-to-use
A campaign to broad- CRYPTO AND that it can be used therapeutic food
cast Mexico’s World BLOCKCHAIN by anyone, anywhere for children in
Cup soccer games the Horn of Africa
Collectible Avatars IMPACT INVESTING
in six native languages
Reddit
Climate Innovation SOCIAL JUSTICE
A marketplace that
AGRICULTURE lets artists create and Development Books Unbanned
Plant-grown dairy and sell digital avatars Fund Brooklyn
proteins Goldman Sachs, Public Library
Nobell Foods EDUCATION Bloomberg A digital library
A new technique Philanthropies, available nationally
Greenlight Match and the Asian to young people,
that grows a dairy
EAB Development Bank who disproportion-
protein in soybeans to
An alternative college A finance structure ately feel the effect
make ultrarealistic
admissions platform to deploy capital and of book bans
plant-based cheese
that makes it easier for catalyze investment
first-generation and in clean energy proj-
AI AND DATA SOFTWARE
low-income students ects across South
Automated Damage to apply for college and Southeast Asia SNAP EBT digital
Identification Service payments processor
Scale AI ENERGY AND MEDIA AND Forage
A free AI tool to SUSTAINABILITY A transaction mecha-
ENTERTAINMENT
automatically detect nism that allows
new damage to Textile-to-textile The “Primetime- grocers to accept
buildings in Ukraine recycling plant ification” of SNAP EBT online
Renewcell Women’s Sports
A large-scale recycling Ally Financial STUDENTS
APPS
plant that turns old A campaign to create
Match Group and clothing into new fiber parity for female ath- FUSE: Intelligent
Garbo Partnership letes, starting with Sensor Fusion
Match Group ENTERPRISE a pledge to spend the Guidance
and Garbo same in advertising Sinan Altun, Umeå
A program allowing Forced Labor Due Institute of Design
across women’s and
online daters to access Diligence Solution A conceptual device
men’s sports by 2027
background checks Sourcemap to help firefighters
THESE ADDITIONAL A system to increase manage electric-
on apps like Tinder PERSONAL FINANCE
W I N N E RS A N D A L L supply chain transpar- vehicle crashes by
THE FINALISTS WERE ency with real-time Finance App for visualizing how to ex-
ARCHITECTURE
S E L E C T E D BY FAS T updates, helping com- Family Caregivers tinguish battery fires
CO M PA N Y E D I TO RS . Niwa panies eliminate hu- Givers
Prefab Design man rights violations An app for family WELLNESS
System Stockholm caregivers to track
A modular apartment EXPERIMENTAL and save on out-of- SmartGoggles
building designed pocket expenses Therabody
to utilize temporary Double Asteroid A device that
permits and be moved Redirection Test combines biometric
when zoning changes Johns Hopkins data with vibration,
University Applied massage, and
Physics Laboratory heat therapies
and NASA to help combat
A breakthrough de- stress and improve
fense test from NASA focus and sleep
to divert potential
asteroids from
colliding with Earth
Redefining power
management
—
 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.7 6

WINNERS
WORKPLACE MIDSIZE

Rework Reentry BUSINESS: 100–

Playbook 999 EMPLOYEES
Aspen Institute nuGen zero-emission
and Slack mining truck

FINALISTS
A tool that tech com- WORLD-CHANGING ADVERTISING
First Mode
panies can use to A retrofit for 50-foot- COMPANY Real Deal on Fentanyl
train and hire people long mining trucks OF THE YEAR Joan Creative
who were formerly that replaces polluting
Fuseproject and the Ad Council
incarcerated diesel with hydrogen
GAF Regen Fries
and batteries
ON THE RISE: PepsiCo McCain and
Salesforce Gravity Road
0–4 YEARS LARGE BUSINESS: Siemens
IN BUSINESS 1,000+ EMPLOYEES UNICEF USA
Delivering Direct Travel Sustainable
Cash With Dignity Badge
AidKit Booking.com
A climate insurance An initiative that
that offers instant, makes it easier
direct, and transpar- for travelers to find AGRICULTURE
ent payouts after more sustainable Bioalbumen,
GENERAL
a natural disaster lodging worldwide an animal-free
EXCELLENCE
egg white
ESTABLISHED BEST WORLD- Carbon Insetting Onego Bio
EXCELLENCE: CHANGING IDEA Program
Organic Valley BioTrim
5–14 YEARS IN ASIA-PACIFIC Trendi
BUSINESS Cool Community
Dot Pad Carbon credits
GoVoteGA Dot Project
GAF for rice growers
Empowrd app A tactile graphics Orbia
ProGeorgia display for visually ElectrifyNYC
An app to help Geor- impaired people City of New York Enzymes that
gia residents access that integrates with reduce fertilizer use
information about Apple’s mobile Expansion Elemental Enzymes
candidates and operating systems of paid
ballot initiatives, apprenticeship Hyperlocal food
find polling locations, program sourcing
BEST WORLD-
and learn about Bitwise Industries Big Wheelbarrow
CHANGING IDEA
ways to be more Ponova
EUROPE, GoVoteGA
politically involved Terviva
M I D D L E E A S T, Empowrd app
AND AFRICA
ProGeorgia
ENDURING IMPACT:
15+ YEARS Delivering Resilient Medtronic Labs
IN BUSINESS Enterprises and Medtronic
Market Systems nuGen zero-
1 Million Black (DREAMS)
Businesses emission mining
Mercy Corps truck
Shopify and AI AND DATA
A program that helps First Mode
Operation Hope refugees start small Frontier
A program to start, businesses and con- Passive cooling Hewlett Packard
grow, and scale 1 mil- nects them with mar- cart for street Enterprise
lion Black-owned kets that need those vendors
businesses by 2030 goods and services Trane Technologies Fully homomorphic
encryption
SMALL BUSINESS: T7X, all-electric Duality Technologies
BEST WORLD-
FEWER THAN
front loader
CHANGING IDEA Bobcat H100 Tensor Core
100 EMPLOYEES GPU
NORTH AMERICA
Turning plastic Nvidia
Strands for Trans Wehwehneh into building
Barba Grooming Bahgahkinahgohn Wildfire Risk Monitor
materials
Boutique Southern Chiefs’ Kayrros
CRDC Global
A digital registry of Organization
trans-friendly barber and Hudson’s Bay The World’s
shops and salons Company Whitest Paint
around the world A project to transform Purdue University
a historic building in
Winnipeg, Manitoba,
into a center for pre-
serving and elevating
Indigenous culture
Breathing new life
into old home movies

1
3
 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.7 8

FINALISTS
Xfinity Large Button Next-Generation RefRecycling
Voice Remote Biosensor Reformation
Comcast Diagnostics
NBCUniversal UNICEF USA The World’s
Whitest Paint
SAM Photo App Purdue University
APPS CLIMATE Action Against Hunger
FoodFull Carbon-capturing
FoodFull concrete
Carbon Limit
GoVoteGA Empowrd
ProGeorgia Climate Fingerprints CORPORATE SOCIAL
Seventh Generation
Mammoth RESPONSIBILITY
ENTERPRISE
WhiteGrey ElectrifyNYC Combating climate EDUCATION
City of New York Frontier
SenseMath misinformation Along Hewlett Packard
Koninklijke Visio Hyperspectral Pinterest Gradient Learning Enterprise
satellites Cool Community
to monitor Earth Dot Pad Omniverse
Project Dot
Pixxel Nvidia
GAF
I-10 Electric Corridor Duolingo Math Software
Food Access in Duolingo
TeraWatt accessibility tools
Reach program
Infrastructure Stark
Chobani My Reading
ARCHITECTURE Academy Using AI to eliminate
Net-zero “Give Where
Berkeley Way emissions tracker Age of Learning food waste
You Live”
Apartments and Speed & Scale Afresh
Mailchimp SoLa Technology
Hope Center and Entrepreneurship
Leddy Maytum Textile-to-textile Google.org
recycling plant Center
Stacy Architects Fellowship: Riot Games and SoLa
Renewcell Crisis Response
Prefab construction I Can Foundation
Using AI to find Google
components Wilco
Falkbuilt and Echo sustainable materials
Mattiq Wilco
EXPERIMENTAL
Regenerative
Design Framework Using rock dust Bacteria to
HDR to remove carbon upcycle plastic
Lithos Carbon Seed Health
The WallMaster
BZI Steel The World’s CRYPTO AND Green Machine
Whitest Paint The Hong Kong
BLOCKCHAIN
Purdue University ENERGY AND Research Institute of
Arcual Salesroom Textiles and Apparel
SUSTAINABILITY
Arcual
Battery-recycling
Console.xyz
technology
Console
Ascend Elements
ART AND DESIGN HesabPay
Climate Impact
HesabPay
CVS Health home CONSUMER PRODUCTS Benchmarking
healthcare collection Web3 Payment Persefoni FINANCE
Degenerate Sneaker
Michael Graves Gateway
NFW x Unless Closed-loop DreamSave
Design Zero Hash
beverage DreamStart Labs
Interface vending system
Exploring a better
Flor Kadeya
food system
EY Doberman The Pump Concept Luna
Babyation Dell Technologies
Nike Forward
Nike Redyper Microbial water
Dyper treatment
Pepsi-Cola DEVELOPING-WORLD
Label-Free China PepsiCo FOOD
Sunny Cup TECHNOLOGY
PepsiCo and Applicator All-electric
Climate financing nuGen zero-emission
Sunny Period mining truck commercial kitchen
for water protection
First Mode Microsoft
Undies Virridy
Lorals OneWater System Animal-free cheese
DreamSave
Epic Cleantec New Culture
Water bottle DreamStart Labs
Cove Power-beaming
WhiteBox technology
The Emissions Capture Emrod
Company
A new approach
to gene editing
 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.8 0

FINALISTS
Beyond Steak Community O.Sah
Beyond Meat Reparations Project Dana Beraja,
The City of Asheville Celine Diz, Matthew
Compton Farm Johnson, Lily Mellor,
Plenty Unlimited Freedom Grams Maria Oleaga,
Aroya and Meredith Tan, Derek
Cultivated beef MEDIA AND POLITICS Meter Group
in suspension Thorton, Katherine
ENTERTAINMENT AND POLICY
SCiFi Foods Strands for Trans Vaquerizo, and
The Armstrong Audit Deception Barba Grooming Adam Zacharewicz,
Cultivated meat Project Project Boutique Savannah College
Upside Foods Native Tongue Transparentem of Art and Design
Communications Wehwehneh
K–12 Products End Poverty Bahgahkinahgohn Rainwater Collective
Impossible Foods Dream. Create. Build. in California Southern Chiefs’ Aman Bhardwaj,
Acomb Ostendorf & EPIC Organization Mark Jones, Kavya
Peanut-free spread
Associates and Hudson’s Bay Rai, and Palak Shah,
Voyage Foods Global Women’s
Company Institute of Design
Reusable Native Sportscasters Health Index
Dishware Program We Believers Hologic
Re:Dish and Corona
Zette
Zette

SOFTWARE TRANSPORTATION

PR FIRMS Greenlight Match Alice All-Electric

AND MARKETING EAB Aircraft
HEALTH
Eviation
AGENCIES Operator support
3D bioprinting
NATURE system for 100% Electric aerospace
of human tissue “The Name”
renewable power and charging
Cellbricks Biocapsules Project R/GA and
systems infrastructure
Ambipar Procter & Gamble
AI4HealthyCities Siemens and Beta Technologies
Health Equity Mammoth Hawaiian Electric Office of Future
Network WhiteGrey
Scale and speed for Mobility and
Novartis
Planetary Scale social justice causes Electrification
Cionic Nature Restoration We the Action Michigan Economic
Fuseproject Earthshot Labs Development
Software Corporation
KardiaMobile Card “The Refugee RAPID RESPONSE accessibility tools
AliveCor Jatoba” Stark Off-road, solar-
Anonymous Mode
Articulation of powered microgrid
Medtronic Labs Flo Health
Indigenous Campworks
Medtronic Project Diamond—
Peoples of Brazil
ORYOM Ophthalmic Ukraine Activation
Robotic Surgery Thylacine De- Automation Alley
Platform Extinction Project
Colossal Biosciences Rush Hour Emergency
ForSight Robotics and Response STUDENTS
Safer Ukraine Simulation in Smart
Cities Air Quality Pavilion URBAN DESIGN
St. Jude Children’s
Duality Robotics Helene Virolan,
Research Hospital AirBubble
Girls Into Coding
Thrive Pathway Satellite technology EcoLogicStudio
to find ships involved Entitled to Equality
Pyx Health Cool Community
in illegal activities Syracuse University’s
PERSONAL FINANCE Project
Spire Global Newhouse School
How Not to GAF
Geoidentity:
Suck at Money NYC Next-Gen
Logging the Border
Invesco QQQ Subway Barrier
Giorgia Maria
myVoyage Malandrino Meet the Edge
personalized OneWater System
IMPACT INVESTING Hemi
enrollment guidance Epic Cleantec
Natalia Ikebara,
Collab SOS Voya Financial SOCIAL JUSTICE Umeå Institute Unbreakable Courts
Collab Fund
The $50 Study of Design Budweiser and Africa
Partners in Equity Rooted School
PIE Foundation
Accessible housing
developments
The Kelsey
Travel with meaning
 W O R L D C H A N G I N G I D E A S • P.8 2

FINALISTS
Future of Work
Collaborative
NationSwell
Pregnancy Options
counseling program
WATER Maven Clinic ENDURING IMPACT: MIDSIZE BEST WORLD-

Closed-loop 15+ YEARS BUSINESS: CHANGING

beverage IN BUSINESS 100–999 IDEA EUROPE,
vending system Cause the Effect EMPLOYEES MIDDLE EAST,
Kadeya SHRM AND AFRICA
Shelly home
PFAS Annihilator Quantum System Two automation devices People-sensing
Revive Environmental IBM Allterco Robotics technology
and Battelle ON THE RISE: Algorized
Social Connection
0–4 YEARS Strands for Trans
Technologies to Barba Grooming Project Textile-to-textile
capture and destroy IN BUSINESS Eventbrite
Boutique recycling plant
forever chemicals Compost Club Renewcell
Johns Hopkins Kent Travel Sustainable
University Applied Badge Warehouse
Physics Laboratory Disability Booking.com automation
Justice Project Pio
Turning plastic Disability Justice
into pipe Project
Advanced LARGE BUSINESS:
Drainage Systems Fairness-as-a-
1,000+ EMPLOYEES
Service
FairPlay AI Frontier
SMALL BUSINESS: Hewlett Packard
Husslup Enterprise BEST WORLD-
Husslup FEWER THAN
Medical clinics CHANGING IDEA
100 EMPLOYEES
Landlord ChenMed LATIN AMERICA
Participation All Vote No Play
WELLNESS Program Kreatives Mitigate Racial Bias PepsiCo Vallejo—
Lotus Campaign in Retail Charter limiting
Clinical trials Animal-free cheese Sephora freshwater use
of supplements Microinsurance for New Culture PepsiCo
Radicle Science climate disasters Passive cooling cart
Raincoat Dot Pad for street vendors “The Refugee
Colorsonic Dot Trane Technologies Jatoba”
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85

T H E

B U S I N E S S

O F

M E N O P A U S E

A G E N E R AT I O N O F

CO M PA N I E S H A S

EMERGED TO ADDRESS

THE SYMPTOMS OF

M E N O PAU S E

AND EXTEND WOMEN’S

V I TA L I T Y. I N T H E

PROCESS, THEY’RE

CHANGING THE VERY

N AT U R E O F AG I N G.

BY AINSLE Y

HARRIS

ILLUSTR ATIONS

BY SOPHI

MIYOKO

GULLBR ANTS
T H E P A L M T R E E S A L O N G

O C E A N A V E N U E A R E V E I L E D

I N M I S T A S I W A L K

T O W A R D T H E P R O P E R H O T E L I N

S A N T A M O N I C A , C A L I F O R N I A , O N A

S A T U R D A Y M O R N I N G I N M A R C H.

INSIDE THE GLASS-AND-CEMENT BUILDING,

where more than 300 women’s voices beckon, I’m con-
fronted with an electric rainbow of statement blazers—
Barbie pink, blush pink, velvety mauve, lime green,
highlighter green, ’70s plaid, leopard print. The “festive
casual” dress code didn’t mention power dressing, but it
didn’t have to. We’re here for a symposium on menopause,
dubbed “The New Pause,” and the women of a certain age
who are in attendance have earned the confidence that
their clothes convey.
How old these women are is hard to say. In the U.S., the
average age at which women officially enter menopause,
or a year without experiencing a menstrual cycle, is 51.
(Throughout this article, we use the word women to refer
to people with ovaries and a vagina.) But here—among
women who have dropped $195 on a day spent explor-
ing the latest research around menopause, while learn-
ing how to optimize their bodies through diet, exercise,
supplements, prescription drugs, and intentional grati-
tude—the specific age associated with menopause feels
less material than the life stage it represents. These women
are parenting teenagers, or have recently become empty
nesters. They have careers. They have sex lives. And they
have disposable income.
That makes them among the most enticing demograph-
ics today. And over the past few years, spurred by a genera-
tional shift that has made older women more vocal and more
visible, a fast-growing world of products and prescriptions
has emerged to ameliorate the trials of menopause and the
period preceding it, known as perimenopause. While the
most notorious symptom is the hot flash, the full list in-
cludes nearly three dozen possibilities, from fatigue to thin-
ning hair to joint pain. A 2020 analysis, published by Female
Founders Fund, an early-stage venture firm, tallied women’s
spending on menopause-related doctor’s visits and treat-
ments at $2,000 a year, on average. If true, that would sug-
gest that menopause—as both a medical condition and a
life stage—could be as much as a $600 billion opportunity.
The menopause market, once invisible to investors, is on its
way to hitting $16 billion by 2025, according to CB Insights.

86 FA S T C O M PA N Y.C O M
 At the New Pause, I’m among the young-
est in the room. At 39, I’m still closer to my
two pregnancies and three miscarriages
than I am to menopause. But I’m familiar
with the complex negotiation that women
make between their bodies and their sense
of self, and the reductive power of society’s
gaze. Pregnancy makes a woman highly con-
spicuous, but it can also eclipse her. Watch-
ing the parade of new menopausal solutions
march across my social feeds—supplements,
serums, hormone-replacement telehealth
services, and more—I’m intrigued, but also
wary. It’s hard to feel encouraged about your
expanding options when they render you a
one-dimensional marketing target the sec-
ond you search “hot flash.”
Even as menopausal products trip over
themselves to infiltrate TikTok feeds, in re-
search labs, there are teams on the verge of
breakthroughs that could diminish meno-
pause’s power, even end it. By tinkering
with the hormones that regulate ovarian
function, the entrepreneurs behind these
efforts aspire to empower women, and I
hope that they will. But part of me resents
them. For decades, if not centuries, com-
panies have been selling women on ways
to “fix” their faces and figures. Soon, we’ll
be able to fine-tune our biology.
Susan Sontag once observed that aging
makes women “obscene” in society’s eyes.
In a sense, the women around me at the
New Pause are here to spar with society—
and themselves—on this point. Women in
midlife are better represented in corpo-
FA S T C O M PA N Y.C O M 87
rate boardrooms and on Hollywood’s silver
screens than ever before, yet society seems
as fixated as ever on aging in women as a
problem to be solved.
On stage in the linen-paneled ballroom
that will be our home for the afternoon, se-
rial entrepreneur Alisa Volkman, cofounder
and CEO of the Swell, a membership com-
munity for women who are over 40, takes
to the podium alongside her cohost, actor
Naomi Watts. Last year, Watts launched
Stripes, a menopause-focused beauty and
wellness brand; her product line includes
face moisturizers and an oil-based lube.
“Our bodies are biologically designed to
pause,” Volkman says. “After so many years
of giving our time, our energy, our blood,
our womb, for some of us, to others, it is all
returning to ourselves. So the question is,
What are we going to do with that?”
“Aging is not a failing,” says Watts, echo-
ing the message of empowerment. “Aging
is actually a fantastic sign that we’re liv-
ing.” Women in the crowd, all of whom have
been gifted a Stripes cooling and calming
face mist, murmur their agreement.
Earlier, in the terra-cotta bathroom, a
woman confronted her reflection in the
mirror as we washed our hands. “At least the
lighting in here is good,” she told her friend.
“It’s making me feel better about my life.”

THE IDEA OF LIFE AFTER MENO-

pause is relatively new. One hundred
years ago, life expectancy for U.S. women
was 58.5 years. With that number now ap-
proaching 80, women can anticipate liv-
ing for multiple decades after menopause.
They are also working longer, earning
more, and having children later in life. But
their biology remains unchanged.
As with puberty and pregnancy, meno-
pause experiences vary widely. Some women
might not even notice that their bodies have
undergone a shift, if it weren’t for the ab-
sence of their period. Others battle a debil-
itating list of symptoms, including night
sweats, brain fog, low libido, vaginal dry-
ness, and depression. Hot flashes can sound
trivial until you’re experiencing one while
wearing a constricting uniform at the start
of your shift. Brain fog is the stuff of com-
edy until you’re a surgeon who no longer
trusts herself in the operating room. In the
U.S., Black and Hispanic women are among
those who suffer the most severe symptoms,
which can last for a decade. Statistically, they
are also the least likely to be able to afford
the wellness-as-luxury menopause solutions
emerging today. (Symptoms vary widely
around the world, suggesting that environ-
mental and systemic factors play a role.)
Menopause also accelerates aging.
Emerging research suggests that many of
the conditions that we associate with aging
in women, including osteoporosis, Alzheim-
er’s disease, and heart disease, are linked to
the hormonal shifts that take place at the
onset of menopause. The concept of a “ge-
riatric” pregnancy at age 35 may sound hy-
perbolic, but it reflects a biological truth.
Ovaries age at twice the rate of other organs,
W H E N T H E R E ’ S A N
O P P O R T U N I T Y T O
W O M E N ’ S H O P E S ,
leading to a decline in fertility and a host
of secondary effects. Hormonal changes at
menopause accelerate cellular aging by 6%,
according to a study by researchers at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Earlier
menopause is associated with a shorter life.
In the face of these challenges, a uni-
verse of menopause-related beauty prod-
ucts and supplements has sprung up.
There are berry breeze–flavored gummy
vitamins ($45), with ingredients such as
Black Cohosh, a flowering plant thought
to help regulate body temperature, from
M O N E T I Z E
F E A R S ,

88 FA S T C O M PA N Y.C O M
 In parallel, there are at least Caddis is selling resilience, starting at
a half-dozen telehealth startups $99 a frame. Beyond these walls, menopause
looking to correct what they see brands are selling wisdom and vitality to
as a gap in medical care for meno- women across the media ecosystem. In 2021,
pausal women. Menopause train- a “Let’s Talk Menopause” ad campaign ap-
ing is an afterthought at most peared at nearly 200 subway stations in New
medical schools, even among York, sponsored by a nonprofit advocacy
doctors pursuing specialties like group. That same year, venture dollars flow-
gynecology. Furthermore, many ing toward “femtech” startups in the U.S.
doctors still believe that hormone surpassed $1 billion for the first time, with
therapy involving estrogen, while women investors playing a leading role. This
effective in managing symptoms year, menopause had its Super Bowl debut,
like hot flashes, can increase the thanks to a spot by Astellas Pharma high-
risk of breast cancer—a conven- lighting VMS, or vasomotor symptoms, bet-
tional wisdom that took hold as ter known as hot flashes and night sweats.
the result of an influential 2002 Social media platforms that previously cat-
study. In the years that have fol- egorized menopause as a medical condition
lowed, a growing chorus of med- have loosened restrictions on menopause
ical professionals has challenged marketing and sales; influencers now ped-
that study, pointing to flaws in its dle everything from vitamins to “vaginal
design and noting that its own microneedling” devices. Five years ago,
data do not support strident warn- most of these products didn’t exist. But
ings around cancer risk. when there’s an opportunity to monetize
Twenty years ago, menopausal women’s hopes, fears, and bodies, mar-
women were flushing their hor- ket forces close in with ruthless efficiency.
mones down the toilet after read- Between panels at the New Pause, psy-
ing alarming headlines about chologist Aliza Pressman takes the stage
breast cancer and estrogen. Today, to lead us through a mindfulness moment.
they’re seeking out startups like We close our eyes, hands on our hearts, to
Alloy, Evernow, Peppy, and Vira meditate on the people we love. We learn
Health in order to explore hor- about the connection between happiness
mone therapy as an option. Over and letting go. But it’s hard to ignore the
the past few years, these compa- competing signals.
nies alone have raised more than
$100 million from healthtech ACROSS THE ROOM, DURING
investors and celebrities alike.
a break in the symposium, I spot a woman
Evernow counts Paltrow, Cam-
in a periwinkle blue top, her hair the ef-
eron Diaz, and SpaceX president
fortless sun-kissed blonde that dyes try to
women’s health brand O Positiv. There Gwynne Shotwell among its backers.mimic. It’s Daisy Robinton, cofounder and
are vaginal moisturizers, like Bonafide’s Whether their focus is wellness or health-
CEO of Oviva Therapeutics, and a former
Revaree inserts ($62), which contain hy-care, these emerging brands are speaking to
model. Like me, she’s technically underage
aluronic acid and can be paired with thewomen who are demanding more than the
for the event. But she’s here to gauge the au-
company’s Ristela tablets ($57) as part of
narrow roles that have historically been as-
dience. Robinton’s biotech startup hopes to
a “sexual satisfaction bundle.” There is a
signed to older women in our society—doting
end menopause as we know it.
collagen-boosting moisturizer ($72) fromgrandmother, perhaps, or power-walkingRobinton, who has a PhD in human bi-
Pause Well-Aging, sold alongside a sil- retiree. Women want their health. But they
ology and translational medicine from Har-
ver “fascia stimulating tool” ($115), which
also want relevancy. “This is for people who
vard, initially focused her research on stem
promises to tighten “sagging facial con-are not in the long process of giving up,” de-
cells. But she shifted to ovarian aging when,
tours.” And for women who like to live on
clares Caddis, maker of fashionable women’s
as a 31-year-old, she visited a reproductive
the wild side, there is whatever Gwynethreading glasses, on its packaging; the glasses
endocrinologist to discuss her fertility and
Paltrow is doing. blanket a display table at the symposium.
was faced with her own perfectly normal,
but rapidly declining ovarian reserve. What
she expected to be a consultation about egg
freezing became a new career path.
A N D B O D I E S , M A R K E T At the time, in 2017, aging was an in-
creasingly popular scientific field. Robin-
F O R C E S C L O S E I N W I T H R U T H - ton had been to countless dinners, salons,
and panels focused on the topic. Yet she
L E S S E F F I C I E N C Y . had never heard anyone mention the ova-

FA S T C O M PA N Y.C O M 89
ries. “Once they’re kaput, which happens at
what is now midlife, the rest of our aging is
accelerated,” she says. “The ovaries are the
canary in the coal mine.”
Robinton heard about research being
conducted at Harvard by a team focused on
reproductive biology. Throughout a wom-
an’s life, her body is steadily maturing and
then discarding the million-plus eggs that
her ovaries contain at birth. By harness-
ing a protein known as anti-Mullerian hor-
mone to slow the process, it’s theoretically
possible to prolong fertility and extend
health span. Robinton recruited the Har-
vard researchers, incubated their approach
at Cambrian Bio, and formed Oviva, which
has raised $11.5 million in seed funding.
“Our hypothesis is that if we can pre-
serve the ovarian reserve, then our ovaries
will continue to function,” she says. Such
an intervention would “potentially delay or
completely forestall menopause entirely,
thereby allowing us to have a more con-
sistent quality of life and age like normal
people—or I guess age like men, which I
hate saying.” (Women experience a zigzag
hormonal decline during perimenopause,
followed by a sudden drop at menopause;
men’s hormonal decline follows a grad-
ual slope.) Oviva is not, Robinton empha-
sizes, working toward a mythical fountain
of youth, nor is its goal to enable women
to become mothers later in life, though it
would open that door. “We’re not prevent-
ing you from aging,” she says. “It’s just that
we’re stopping that cliff moment.”
Oviva is one of a handful of biotech start-
ups working toward therapeutics that would
end menopause as we know it, or at the very
least give women better options for manag-
ing their fertility. New York–based Celmatix,
which has raised just over $100 million,
is also trying to pick the scientific lock on
ovarian function. When founder and CEO
Piraye Yurttas Beim, who has a PhD in mo-
lecular biology and mammalian embryol-
ogy, created her company in 2009, her initial
product centered around gathering data on
women’s reproductive health in an effort
to present women with better information
about their chances of success with IVF. She
was able to build a data set that includes ge-
netic information, microbiome sequencing,
reproductive outcomes, and more.
Now, she’s developing multiple drugs,
including a therapeutic that targets the
same protein as Robinton, and with a sim-
ilar objective—to transform menopause’s
cliff into a more gradual slope. Every wom-
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
90
an’s hormone levels are different; in the-
ory, the proprietary data sets that Beim
has compiled will support the creation of
precision medicine interventions that can
better engineer an optimal slope for each
woman. Beim expects Celmatix’s first hu-
man trials to focus on women who have
been diagnosed with cancer and are fac-
ing early menopause as a result of chemo-
therapy treatments.
“Going through breast cancer treat-
ment, you lose about a decade of your ovar-
ian function,” she says. “That’s certainly
bad news if you want to have any more
children, but it’s also bad news because
all of the things we hear about the meno-
pause transition—the hot flashes, the sleep
disruption, the sexual disruptions—are
greatly amplified.” But her mission is big-
ger than addressing premature menopause
in cancer patients. “One of the biggest lies
in healthcare today is that menopause is a
natural phenomenon, or a phenomenon
that we should feel empowered by some-
how, as a rite of passage,” Beim says. In her
eyes, it’s a “public health crisis.”
Not everyone agrees. Martha Hickey, a
professor of obstetrics and gynecology at
the University of Melbourne who published
an article last year in the medical journal
The BMJ titled “Normalizing Menopause,”
tells me she’s exasperated by the “attribu-
tion of all things bad about women to their
hormones.” To her, it smacks of the same
“Victorian beliefs” that led people to con-
clude that women’s hormones were mak-
ing them hysterical. Many aspects of aging
are unrelated to hormones. On the other
hand, women over 50 are four times as likely
as men to be diagnosed with osteoporosis,
which is exacerbated by menopause and can
lead to back pain, broken hips, and severely
diminished quality of life. It’s sobering to
think that much of this could be avoided
with the right interventions in midlife.
Beim sees the conversation around
menopause as a chance to better educate
women about their own health. “A big mis-
conception that a lot of women have is that
their ovaries are just for making babies,”
she says. “But the reality is that the ovary
is the central command of our endocrine
system, our metabolic system.”
In the same way that women are
screened today for certain cancers, women
in the future might be screened in early
adulthood for ovarian health. The total
addressable market for such a diagnostic:
roughly half the world’s population.
SPRING 2023
LIKE MOST WOMEN, I DIDN’T THINK
much about my ovaries until they were a
problem. I started to feel discomfort while
trapped in the back of a rental car along
with my fiancé while my future brother-in-
law drove us from New York to Washington,
D.C., for the holidays. As the discomfort
grew, I wanted to curl up on the side of the
road, from pain as much as embarrass-
ment. Back home, the gentle midwife at
my OB-GYN’s practice told me that I had
developed ovarian cysts—a fine-print risk
factor associated with my IUD that no one
had previously bothered to explain. One of
my cysts had ruptured.
As a woman, it can be surprisingly easy
to forget that your body belongs to you, es-
pecially when everyone else seems to have
an opinion about it. This alienation is fu-
eled by the fact that women have so little in-
formation about their own inner workings,
following decades of underinvestment in re-
search and patronizing medical practices.
This lack of research has meant that
businesses addressing menopause, to date,
have isolated women’s symptoms, offering
separate products to address them. Each
symptom generates new concerns, new
fears, new marketing opportunities. But
we’re now discovering that there’s a highly
coherent biological system behind them all.
The three-year-old Global Consortium
for Reproductive Longevity & Equality has
become the hub for this line of inquiry. The
center’s stated mission is to “alter the soci-
etal balance toward equality for women by
defining what leads to menopause and de-
veloping interventions to slow or reverse
it.” It’s made grants worth $7.4 million in
support of nearly two dozen researchers
across the globe and plans to nearly dou-
ble that amount this spring. Neuroscien-
tist Jennifer Garrison, who has a PhD in
chemical biology, established the consor-
tium alongside Nicole Shanahan, ex-wife
of Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
Despite fighting jet lag following a red-
eye flight to Europe, Garrison is more than
happy, when I get her on Zoom, to give me
a quick biology lesson on the connection
between the ovaries and the brain—
specifically, the ovary and the neural cir-
cuits in the hypothalamus. The hypo-
thalamus, she explains, is engaged in a
chemical conversation with the body’s or-
gans, mediated by hormones, such as es-
trogen and progesterone.
“When you start to focus on any aspect
of female reproduction through the lens of
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the brain, the symptoms that are experi-
enced during puberty, periods, pregnancy,
lactation, and menopause—suddenly, they
all make sense,” she says. “Neurons that
control body-temperature regulation could
be overlapping with the neurons that con-
trol reproductive function. These neurons
also control the affective components of be-
havior, so things like mood and emotion.”
In other words, those disparate, seemingly
random symptoms that are the precursors
of menopause share a common neurologi-
cal infrastructure.
“The moonshot goal,” Garrison con-
tinues, “would be simply to sync up aging
in the ovaries with aging in the rest of the
woman’s body, and that would mean ex-
tending reproductive span—pushing out
the edge of menopause or even getting rid
of menopause altogether.” In the next five
years, she expects that researchers will
achieve a first major milestone on that
pathway: better diagnostics for women.
Later, we might see therapeutics capable
of maintaining a level of hormonal func-
tion that benefits overall health.
The implications are potentially pro-
found: older mothers, longer careers, per-
haps an entirely new architecture for our life
stages—that is, for women who can afford
it. Current disparities in healthcare would
almost surely shape this brave new world.
As Garrison speaks, I think of what passes
for empowerment for women at the mo-
ment. Wrinkle prevention. Working a side
hustle. On TikTok, young influencers getting
boob jobs and proudly declaring, “I did this
for me.” But actually understanding wom-
en’s biology, and your own body? It’s hard to
conceive of how revolutionary that would be.
Back in Santa Monica, six hours of pan-
els and presentations and motivational
talks have come to an end. We spill out into
the vestibule, greeted by glasses of char-
donnay and mocktails infused with Rei-
shi mushroom. Today, selling menopause
is becoming a big business. By the time I
retire, selling the end of menopause could
be an even bigger one. As we age, each of
us will have to navigate this shifting land-
scape on our own. Needing to jot down
some notes, I return to the ballroom, hop-
ing to sit down for a moment. But the chairs
are already gone.
aharris@fastcompany.com
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FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
92
E V A
L O N G O R I A
(Continued from page 47)
for Ben Affleck’s film Air dropped in Feb-
ruary, about Nike’s courtship of Michael
Jordan, rumblings of inaccuracy began.
Longoria’s challenge with Flamin’ Hot is
to make sure that the overriding message
and emotion of Montañez’s tale outweighs
any potential back-and-forth about the
snack’s invention.
In her hands, the film deftly tiptoes
around the disputed elements of the story,
using a number of creative techniques to
convey that not only is it told from Monta-
ñez’s perspective, but also that he’s been
known to spin a yarn or two in the service
of a good story. Scenes depicting Frito-Lay
executives at the company’s Plano, Texas,
headquarters talking like street-level gang-
sters convey in an over-the-top way that
much of the corporate side of this tale is
just Montañez’s impression of what hap-
pened, since he wasn’t there and couldn’t
have known “what they were actually say-
ing,” she says. “I decided to go with what
he thought they’d be saying.” For those
scenes, Longoria, whose comedic work on
shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Saturday
Night Live, and Black-ish rarely gets the at-
tention it deserves, cites Drunk History as
a major influence. “It’s my favorite show,”
she says. “That’s where I got it!”
WHEN WE SPOKE IN MARCH, FLAMIN’
Hot wasn’t the only major project Longo-
ria had premiering that month. Searching
for Mexico, a spin-off of Stanley Tucci’s
hit CNN Originals show Searching for It-
aly, was also about to debut. “When people
see the beauty of this country—its peo-
ple, its culture—and realize why Ameri-
cans love tacos and margaritas so much,
it comes from here,” she says. “So you
should treat that country with kindness
and compassion.”
When asked how she decides which
projects will be worth her time and energy,
she says her first criterion is its potential for
lasting impact. “Some people say we should
SPRING 2023
remake Desperate Housewives,” she says.
“And my answer is, ‘Why?’ ”
Take tequila. Longoria says she’d been
approached several times over the years
about partnering with a tequila company,
but always said no. Most tequila branding
was rooted in a macho image she wasn’t in-
terested in. (Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahl-
berg, Michael Jordan, Nick Jonas, Carlos
Santana, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul,
and George Clooney and Rande Gerber
all have their own lines.) But in 2021, she
agreed to cofound a brand, Casa Del Sol,
and hired women for the roles of master
distiller, president, and head tequilero.
Unlike other celebrity-driven booze
brands, Casa Del Sol isn’t centered on
Longoria herself. It focuses on sustainable
production methods (such as using agave
biomass to fuel the distillery’s cooking
process) and tequila’s role in Mexican cul-
ture. Its vegan leather bottleneck covers are
made by local artisans in Jalisco who work
from home. The company sends them the
material to cut, stamp, and sew, and Lon-
goria is proud of how this helps support
that local economy. “Our distillery is also
100% Mexican-owned, while most others
are owned by U.S. conglomerates,” she says,
a fact that “really surprised me.”
As for Flamin’ Hot, she believes that its
lasting impact will be twofold, with viewers
being inspired by its example of Mexican
American success and with the film itself be-
ing a showcase for Latino and Latina talent,
including not just lead actors Jesse Garcia
and Annie Gonzalez, but screenwriter Linda
Yvette Chavez (who cowrote with Lewis Col-
ick), director of photography Federico Can-
tini, production designer Brandon Mendez,
and costume designer Elaine Montalvo.
“People think Hollywood is so progres-
sive,” she says. “It’s not. If you look at the
number of female directors this year com-
pared to last, it’s down. If you look at the
number of Latinos on-screen, it’s down.
There’s this illusion of progress. As soon
as a report comes out that says there’s been
more Latinos on TV, the foot comes off the
gas. Same thing on voting. We have one
good turnout and people start to ease up.
But no! It happened only because of strong
grassroots organizing. You can’t stop be-
cause of one success.”
@jeffcbeer
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R I P , E S G ?
(Continued from page 55)
companies attempting to force sharehold-
ers to adopt a left-wing agenda”—warning
that their voting recommendations on cli-
mate and diversity issues might be break-
ing state laws. Two months later, in Texas,
state senator Hughes’s “fiduciary duty”
bill also targeted these firms. “Far too
much power is concentrated in the hands
of ‘shareholder services,’ ” Elon Musk
noted on Twitter. “ISS and Glass Lewis ef-
fectively control the stock market.”
Strive may be focused on profits, but
critics ask why would anyone switch pen-
sion investments if they’re delivering sat-
isfactory rates of return? Especially when
you consider that Strive’s funds tend to
have higher fees: Energy fund DRLL, for
example, charges customers 0.41% com-
pared with State Street’s 0.1% for a nearly
identical fund. DRLL was up 7.5% in its first
eight months compared with its rival’s 7.8%
over the same period. “What investor in
their right mind would pay four times the
fees?” asks Andrew Behar, CEO of the pro-
ESG shareholder activist firm As You Sow.
Still, almost one year in, Strive appears
to be working as designed. It has poached
top talent from State Street, Fidelity, Citi,
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and
JPMorgan Chase. Strive’s chief investment
officer came from the California Public
Employees Retirement System (CalPERS),
the nation’s largest public pension fund,
known for both its progressive activism
and making tons of money. Strive’s head of
corporate governance is none other than
Justin Danhof, the conservative activist
who had an epiphany that “depoliticizing
capital markets,” he says, “is a better re-
sult than an anti-ESG future.”
Half of Strive’s eight investment funds
are up since they launched into this slug-
gish market, with its U.S. semiconductor
one up more than 20%. The firm has ap-
proximately $600 million under manage-
ment, with more than half of it in DRLL,
enough for Frericks in February to claim
that Strive was on a faster trajectory to
$1 billion than any ETF startup in history.
As Danhof tells me, “You don’t win hearts
and minds by being against something.”
FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M
94
WHEN ONE OF THE MOST AN-
ticipated letters in corporate America,
Larry Fink’s annual message to CEOs, fi-
nally appeared in mid-March 2023 (two
months late), something was missing from
the 9,000-word missive: the term “ESG.”
Nor did ESG appear in the voting guide-
lines that BlackRock released in January.
This continues a trend in which Fink—who
in January acknowledged that the anti-
ESG crowd’s “attacks are now personal”—
has been quietly backing away from the
idea he helped promote. Last year, Fink de-
clared, “Stakeholder capitalism is not about
politics. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism.” By
contrast, Fink focused this year on “choice.”
He promoted BlackRock’s proprietary, first-
of-its-kind Voting Choice tool so that inves-
tors would no longer have to rely on what
BlackRock thought was best for them. In
other words, he was giving the anti-ESG
forces exactly what they wanted. Last year,
BlackRock’s support for U.S. ESG share-
holder proposals also fell almost by half. Too
many sought to “dictate the pace of compa-
nies’ energy transition plans,” the company
stated, “with little regard to the disruption
caused to their financial performance.”
It’s part of a wider trend. ISS, the proxy
service, announced new “board-aligned
proxy voting guidelines” in March to, as one
of its executives explained, “satisfy many of
the Red State pension funds and their leg-
islatures.” Although a recent KPMG survey
of U.S. CEOs revealed that 70% agree that
ESG improves financial performance, 59%
planned to “pause or reconsider” their ESG
commitments. MSCI, a leading ESG rat-
ing and analytics firm, downgraded 31,000
funds this spring whose scores did not
“meaningfully reflect” their true ESG value.
The significant correction bolsters con-
servative fund managers’ critique that ESG
was not only a fad, but the product of a vir-
tue bubble born out of the U.S.’s low inter-
est rates after the 2008 financial crisis. In
those halcyon days, companies could pur-
sue gratuitous social causes without con-
sequence, and financial firms could brand
funds as ESG on tenuous reasoning. Now,
a year into significant inflation, interest-
rate hikes, and corporate austerity, inves-
tors are focused on making money. ESG
only worked, argues the MAGA fund’s Lam-
bert, “in a zero-interest-rate environment.”
Meanwhile, the fossil fuels are flowing.
The West’s five largest oil companies anni-
hilated their previous profit records in 2022,
raking in nearly $200 billion. Exxon boosted
SPRING 2023
its oil-drilling spending by 45%, and in
March, President Biden, who entered office
saying he’d reject new drilling on federal
land, approved ConocoPhillips’s new 30-
year, 600-million-barrel project in Alaska.
As You Sow CEO Behar, however, is de-
fiant. He offers a pointed critique of Strive:
The firm has politicized ESG and now offers
itself as the solution to the problem it cre-
ated. The average investor, company, and
U.S. citizen, he says, sees through the anti-
ESG effort. He’s loath to engage the idea
that ESG might be losing ground.
For people who care about the underly-
ing ideals of ESG, their current best hope
may actually come from Republican cir-
cles. More than three dozen associations
made up of bankers, insurance companies,
and chambers of commerce—free-market
trade groups—have spoken out against
some of the proposed anti-ESG legislation
based on the Texas law, saying it violates
their principles of government interfer-
ence in corporate affairs. Even Strive’s Dan-
hof counseled the attendees of the National
Conservatism Conference’s “Evil, Stupid-
ity, or Grift?” panel last September that
“there is no way to boycott your way out
of this problem” of many American corpo-
rations being “now steadily aligned with
the political left.” According to leaked au-
dio obtained by Documented, a watchdog
group, some conservatives fear that Dem-
ocrats will steal the idea of these bills and
pass laws to protect wind turbines.
Back in Texas, Isaac isn’t worried. Asked
at the Texas Public Policy Foundation event
if the anti-ESG initiative he helped kick-
start is advancing toward its goal, he at first
demurs, declaring it “an uphill battle, big
time.” But then he can’t help himself from
laying out a sophisticated game plan. He
tells me there will need to be “a little cleanup
done” to the anti-ESG bills that have rankled
free-market absolutists. “If you’re going to
boycott, divest, or sanction ranching, farm-
ing, or forestry, then expect that the state
won’t do business with you,” he says, imply-
ing that any carbon-intensive or resource-
extractive industry that progressives might
target will be protected. Then “we are going
to attack insurance,” he vows, because states
license and regulate that industry. “You’re
into ESG? Great, you won’t even get to oper-
ate here anymore. Go to Europe, make your
money there. You’re done,” he adds. “That’s
what we’re coming swinging with. We just
gotta stop this woke political ideology.”
@clintrainey
 New York Yankee Great, MARIANO RIVERA,
Honored for HOF Career and Community Service

On March 30, the Print & Graphic Communications Association presented

Mariano Rivera, New York Yankee legend and Major League Baseball
Hall of Fame member, with its 2023 Franklin Award for Distinguished
Service. Mr. Rivera was recognized for his stellar athletic career and
equally important, his philanthropic efforts to provide economically
disadvantaged young people with the skills and tools they need to be
successful in life.

MARIANO RIVERA LEARNING CENTER

Under development in New Rochelle,
NY, this 40,000 square foot facility
will provide guidance and resources
to students of impoverished families,
helping them to achieve success in
higher education and establish careers
in high demand fields.

SAVE 653
An initiative, that adds what Mariano
regards as his most important save,
to his record setting 652 games saved
as a big-league relief pitcher. Through
fundraising, education, scholarships and
personal guidance, Save 653 serves to
give youth from minority communities
the resources and relationships they
need for success in today’s world.

Join The
Mariano
Initiative
Save 653

The Mariano Rivera Foundation is a 501(c)(3)

public non-profit organization. Your donation
will support the foundation’s mission to help
underprivileged youth around the country.
 T H E R E B R A N D
D E S I G N A G E N C Y C O L L I N S G I V E S G M O S A N E W I D E N T I T Y .

RE
F O
BE

Genetically
Modified Organisms

W E E N C O U N T E R G M O S E V E R Y D AY, A N D M E T H O D S O F Collins
selective plant breeding have been used for thousands of years. With clients that
include Spotify,
This kind of scientific engineering can help adapt crops to the
Sweetgreen, and
changing climate and our growing population. GMOs, however, Dropbox, New
AFT are still associated with agri-giants, which use them to enable York City–based
ER
pesticide use—with myriad environmental and human impacts. To help brand transfor-
mation agency
imagine a future in which scientifically boosted crops have increased nu- Collins helps
trition and hardiness, Fast Company turned to branding agency Collins,
+Food
boost startups
which developed a universal symbol that telegraphs bioengineered—or and reinvent leg-
acy brands by
“plussed”—products to consumers. “The ‘+’ is familiar as a shorthand for
reimagining their
‘better,’ appearing in everything from entertainment, with Disney+, to ed- consumer-facing
ucation, with Pearson+,” says Brian Collins, the agency’s CEO and creative identities.
director. “Leading with the ‘+’ implies an inherent quality.” —David Salazar

FA S TC O M PA N Y.C O M SPRING 2023

96
CONCEP T AND DESIGN BY COLLINS
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