Life with a fluctuating income is a lot like being left-handed: The world isnt designed to meet your needs, so you need to adjust accordingly.
Those who make the leap into solopreneurship are often struck by all the little things they took for granted as salaried employees. Things like having health benefits, taxes and retirement savings deducted from their earnings, knowing exactly when the next injection of cash is coming, or what theyll make next month. Even monthly billing cycles for things like rent, student loans, and car payments are based on the assumption of predictable monthly earnings.
Most dont ditch the corporate life because theyre really good at finance and tax planningunless, of course, theyre venturing off to become an independent accounting professional. For most, having to suddenly act as your own finance department is not just jarring, but also distracting from the countless other challenges that come with establishing an independent business.
Solopreneurs have so much on their plate already; adding money stress is siphoning off creativity that would be much better spent making their businesses successful, says Ashley Lapato, personal finance educator for budgeting software provider YNAB. Once they get a handle on it, they tend to see more success.
Here are some expert tips to help solopreneurs put away the calculator and spreadsheets, and get back to the things they do best. (Unless, of course, that thing also involves a calculator and spreadsheet.)
Know your baseline
When you dont know how much will be in the earnings column each month, it’s even more important to get a handle on expenses.
According to Lapato, the first step is understanding the bare minimum you need to support your lifestyle.
That might not include your Netflix subscription, but it’s things like your mortgage, minimums on any debt, your car payment, and groceries, she says. Then add irregular expenses. Because once you make that leap into solopreneurship, those irregular expenses can feel like emergencies.
For example, if you travel to visit family each year, want to send your kids to summer camp, or have a big annual auto insurance bill, Lapato recommends breaking up those expenses and incorporating them into your baseline. Knowing that number, she says, allows solopreneurs to cover the necessities and then, once they earn that minimum, start saving for the next month.
If, for example, that baseline is $8,000, Lapato says every dollar you earn in a given month after reaching that $8,000 minimum can be put toward next months baseline, longer-term savings, discretionary spending, or investing in the business. I would want at least three months of baseline buffer covered before taking the leap into full-time solopreneurship, she adds.
Set up a legal entity
There comes a point at which American solopreneurs can start seeing big tax savings by setting up a limited liability company (LLC) and registering as an S corporation, establishing a formal business for their solo venture in the United Statesthough similar tax structures exist elsewhere, too.
If you make $70,000 and you’re going to get to $100,000 in the next couple of years, its the right solution, says Ran Harpaz, the CEO of Lettuce Financial, an accounting and tax software platform for solopreneurs earning six figures. People on our platform see annual average savings of $15,000, so the S corp election and the structure of the company are very meaningful.
Harpaz explains that having an S corporation separates business earnings and expenses; your customers pay into the company, and the company pays you what the government considers a reasonable salary. The salary portion is subject to traditional tax requirements. The rest is taxed at much more favorable corporate rates.
Creating a separate business entity also allows you to open business bank accounts and credit cards.
It’s the right thing to do compliance-wise, but it’s also the right thing to do for financial management, Harpaz says, explaining that having separate accounts makes it easier to keep tax-exempt business expenses separate from personal spending.
Put money aside for taxes
There is perhaps nothing more sobering than seeing your first tax bill as a solopreneur.
For those accustomed to having their taxes automatically deducted from paychecks, that bill will make you go numb, especially if you havent planned accordingly. Though its hard to predict how much youll owe when you dont know how much youll make, solopreneurs can often make an educated, conservative estimate and save accordingly.
Every Monday, my wife and I fill out a sheet that says how much income we made [the previous week], how much we have to set aside for taxes, and what we spent, says Justin Welsh, a content creator and author of The Saturday Solopreneur newsletter. We pay our credit cards off, and then we set aside the money for taxes, we save and invest anything that’s left over, and that is a weekly recurring meeting that we’ve done for over five years.
Over time, Welsh says the weekly fluctuations can be used to calculate a more predictable average, which helps the couple anticipate which tax bracket theyll fall into at the end of the year, and avoid overspending on the good weeks or panicking on the not-so-good ones.
The goal is never to get too high with the highs and too low with the lows, he says. You just pretend you’re average every single week.
Use tools, but keep it simple
As the community of solopreneurs expands, so does the market for tools and technologies to make their lives easierYNAB and Lettuce among them.
Welsh, for his part, is bullish on AI, but warns solopreneurs not to over-subscribe themselves. The whole goal of solopreneurship is simplicity, he says. I think you can do that through smart planning, using a simple spreadsheet and a thought partner in an LLM.
For example, Welsh says solopreneurs can input their income and expense details and ask an AI platform to create a customized financial plan for them, or a contingency plan for when earnings drop unexpectedly.
My advice to solopreneurs is to start simple and only add software or tools when it absolutely keeps you from making a big mistake or gives you a large percentage of your revenue back through tax optimization, he says. Other than that, just try and make as much as you can, try and keep as much as you can, and try and spend as little as you can.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading Democratic critic of President Donald Trump, says he will consider running for the White House in 2028 after the midterm elections next year.Asked in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” whether if would be fair to say he would give a campaign serious thought after the November 2026 vote, the term-limited governor said, “I’d be lying otherwise.”Newsom has been trying to raise his national profile, adopting a combative style that parodies Trump’s social media strategy with similar all-caps posts, memes and merchandise.The Democratic governor has sparred with the Republican president over the deployment of the California National Guard following immigration protests and Trump’s redistricting moves in Texas. Newsom has also led a campaign to redraw California’s own maps to add five Democratic U.S. House seats in response to the changes in Texas. Voting is underway on the so-called Proposition 50 and concludes Nov. 4.“I’m looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment. And that’s the question for the American people,” he said in the interview that aired Sunday.The feud between Trump and Newsom does not seem like it’s going away anytime soon. On Thursday, Trump acknowledged he had agreed to halt a planned show of federal force planned for this weekend in San Francisco after appeals from tech executives and the mayor. Newsom was mayor of San Francisco between 2004 and 2011.In the interview, Newsom described Trump as an “invasive species.”“He’s a wrecking ball. Not just the symbolism and substance of the East Wing,” Newsom said, referring to the demolition of that part of the White House to build a ballroom. “He’s wrecking alliances, truth, trust, tradition, institutions.”Earlier this year, Newsom launched a podcast in an effort to brand himself as a centrist. During the show, he has held conversations with influential figures all across the political spectrum, from late conservative Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on a college campus tour, as well as former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate, and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat.
Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press
For most of its two-decade history, ActBlue hummed along in relative obscurityand for Democrats, it might have been better off that way.
The online donation platform for the left was founded in 2004 with a mission to harness the power of the internet and fuel political campaigns through small dollar donations. In the 2008 presidential cycle, it set out with the humble goal of raising $100 million for Democrats; this year, it raised nearly eight times that much in the first half of 2025 alone. ActBlue processed another $482 million in the third quarter of this year.
As ActBlues coffers have grown, so has the target on its back.
What began as a series of spurious online rumors about alleged fraud on the platform has since spiraled into a slew of state investigations, a lengthy ongoing probe led by House Republicans, and a Department of Justice investigation ordered by President Trump himself in April. At the same time, the organization, which operates as a political action committee, has recently seen a number of high profile departures, including within its legal team, which have only fanned the flames of Republican inquiries.
The DOJs deadline to complete its investigation has already passed, and the department declined to comment for this story. The Houses investigation, meanwhile, has yielded one preliminary report, which charges ActBlue executives with failing to take the threat of fraud seriously, without identifying any instances of potential fraud that ActBlue hadnt already caught. The report also made no mention of WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform, which is facing its own investigations regarding allegedly deceptive fundraising practices.
Still, the political attacks and turnover have placed substantial strain on a vital piece of Democratic infrastructure, through which billions of dollars in funding flow. Now, the question is whether ActBlue can survive this relentless firestormand what it will mean to the party if it cant.
Fast Company spoke with more than a dozen sources, including ActBlues CEO, current leadership, former employees, Democratic strategists, and other former party officials. These conversations show that even as Democrats rally around ActBlue in the face of what they say are dangerous attacks from the right, they are also sharply divided over whether the organization is equipped to handle these blows and whether the right leaders are in place to meet the moment.
Internal turmoil
One figure at the center of this divide is ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones, who joined the organization in 2023 after spending her career working at tech companies (eBay, Facebook, Yahoo) and serving in local government in East Palo Alto. After The New York Times reported on the departures of at least seven senior ActBlue leaders in April, ActBlue sought to cast the moves as part of the natural turnover after the 2024 election cycle.
But former ActBlue employees and Democratic strategists familiar with the exits told Fast Company that many of the departures stemmed from what one former employee characterized as a verbally abusive working environment under Wallace-Jones, marked by major blowouts. This employee described Wallace-Jones as deeply distrustful of both the Democratic ecosystem and members of her own staff.
The former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of being singled out by members of Congress, described a situation in which he briefed ActBlues general counsel on a potential sponsorship that could have had legal implications for ActBlue. According to internal communications viewed by Fast Company, Wallace-Jones later chastised the former employee for sharing information with ActBlues legal team, suggesting that doing so was tantamount to leaking. (ActBlue declined to respond directly to this claim).
People did not just leave because it was the end of a cycle, the former employee said. We did not trust that she was the leader to take this organization forward anymore.
“She made it very clear to everybody that they were replaceable,” said another former employee.
According to The New York Timess reporting in April, unions representing ActBlue employees wrote a letter to the board asking it to hire outside counsel to investigate the current state of the organization and evaluate if our C.E.O. is doing her job in an appropriate, competent and responsible manner. A spokesperson for ActBlue told Fast Company the firm had in fact supported an independent and privileged investigation, which had concluded that the allegations in the letter could not be substantiated.
Many of these interpersonal challenges would scarcely bear mentioning in the cutthroat world of politics or even tech, if it werent for the fact that theyve bled out into the public domain and are now being used as evidence by House Republicans that something must be awry within ActBlue.
After the Times report, the committees investigating ActBlue shifted focus, sending another letter to the organization, this time demanding documents related to the resignations and possible retaliation against whistleblowers. In July, the committees subpoenaed ActBlue for further documents, arguing that the staff departures may be related to ActBlues fraud-prevention efforts. In September, the committees reportedly subpoenaed ActBlues former lawyers, including its former general counsel, Darrin Hurwitz. (Hurwitz did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment).
The sources who spoke to Fast Company say ActBlues staff turnover has nothing to do with what they say are baseless allegations of fraud being leveled by Republicans. They want to say, Oh, all the executives fled the company because of all the craziness they saw, said one former employee. That could not be farther from the truth.
Still, they point to these allegations as one side effect of Wallace-Joness leadership and an example of how the organization has failed to navigate the political messaging of this moment.
At its core, ActBlue is a olitical organization that does tech, not a tech organization that works in politics. At every turn, theyve fucked up the politics, said one former Democratic National Committee official, who critiqued ActBlue for failing to work with the rest of the party to combat the GOPs attacks and disseminate information about the recent staff departures. No one knows whats going on over there. Thats led to more fear than is rational, he said.
One of the former employees who spoke with Fast Company said Wallace-Jones did not appear to take the GOPs attacks on the platform seriously until it was too late. Of all the priorities, this was not a top one, and it should have been, considering the risk its yielded, the former employee said.
Asked about this claim, an ActBlue spokesperson told Fast Company, Everything weve said from last August through today has demonstrated we are fighting these attacks aggressively, thoughtfully, and honestly.
Hard choices
In an interview with Fast Company, Wallace-Jones said she needed to make hard choices when she arrived at ActBlue. Indeed, a few months after she joined the organization, ActBlue laid off one-sixth of its staff in what Wallace-Jones said at the time was an effort to control costs and focus on its technology.
Some of the former employees interviewed for this story agreed that, while painful, many of the organizational changes Wallace-Jones made were necessary.
It is my job to bring ActBlue into its next phase of contribution, and in so doing, any CEO has got to evaluate what the present state of the organization is. Any CEO has got to evaluate whether all of the pieces are in place to support the go forward. In some cases there are hard choices to be made, Wallace-Jones told Fast Company. She said her current team is the right team to carry us forward into who we can become.
An ActBlue spokesperson said in a statement that it would be difficult to imagine or point to an instance where a male CEO would be similarly scrutinized, let alone have a credible media article focused on such a non-issue.
The spokesperson described the Republican attacks against ActBlue as attacks against democracy itself. [T]hey are coming after ActBlue because we are the largest, most successful and impactful technology-driven fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and Progressive causes, the spokesperson said. To suggest that their attacks are due to anything other than a desire to take out the infrastructure of the Left is short-sided at Best. [sic]
Several current ActBlue executives and Democratic strategists also described Wallace-Jones as precisely the kind of leader the organization now requires. Jason Wong, who has been ActBlues vice president of engineering since 2022, said that prior to Wallace-Joness arrival ActBlue operated mostly on a consensus basis, making it difficult to move transformative projects forward.
Wallace-Jones has brought more clarity to ActBlue, Wong said, and has pushed ActBlue to take on a bigger role within the party. Recently, the firm acquired its first company, a digital organizing platform called Impactive, and announced it would be donating $1 million to Democratic state parties to bolster their infrastructure. It also recently launched Raise, a simplified version of its fundraising tools, designed for down-ballot races.
We’re a different company today than we were back then, Wong said. He acknowledged that, those transformations are difficult for everyone involved.
Lawrence Oliver, ActBlues new chief legal officer, who joined the firm after the departure of its former general counsel, also described Wallace-Jones as the perfect leader for this.
Is she demanding? Yes. Is she tough? Yes. But Ive worked for a lot of tough and demanding people, said Oliver, who was previously chief counsel of investigations at Boeing and a special counsel in the Cook County, Illinois State Attorneys Office.
Others outside of the organization defended Wallace-Joness communication within the broader Democratic party. She worked overtime trying to make sure she had meetings with people, said Minyon Moore, who has previously served as chair of the Democratic National Convention Committee and CEO of the Democratic National Committee. She called the notion that Wallace-Jones has been slow to respond to the GOPs attacks BS.
We can blame ActBlue for showing up slow or coming on too fast, but the fact is we all should be ready to pounce on that, Moore said.
One platform, lots of vulnerabilities
Some of the people Fast Company spoke to pointed to ActBlues record under Wallace-Jones, which includes processing more than $3.8 billion in donations in 2024. WinRed, by contrast, brought in less than half of that. But Wallace-Joness critics argue that ActBlue can only take so much credit for that cash bump. The money the party and the candidates are raising is because were in a huge crisis moment and huge fight, said the former DNC official. The historic nature of Democratic fundraising is despite ActBlue at this point, not because of it.
Beyond the questions about ActBlues current leadership, the conflict surrounding the organization has highlighted the risks of relying on a single payment platform. Trump attacks or not, it’s a precarious place to be, said one Democratic strategist.
Daniel Garcia, communications director for the Democratic party of New Mexico, said his team began working with another payment platform, GoodChange, in addition to ActBlue, earlier this year, in part due to the ongoing investigations.
The potential for ActBlue to come under attack certainly is a concern for us, Garcia said. In the event something does happen to ActBlue because of the Trump administration, we do want to be prepared and have another option.
GoodChange cofounder Becky Pittman told Fast Company the firm is now working with 20 state parties and county committees. She said GoodChanges platformwhich includes, among other things, event features and a tool that allows donors to donate spare change from every purchase they makeoften complements other payment platforms. And she condemned the GOPs attacks on ActBlue. It makes it dangerous for everyone, Pittman said.
In an interview, Wallace-Jones said Democrats arent moving away from ActBlue, pointing to the amount of donations that have flowed through the platform this year. ActBlue has had, bar none, the most successful fundraising cycle its ever had in its history, she said.
Of course, if Democrats wanted to distance themselves from ActBlue entirely, it would be no trivial thing. ActBlues sheer size and dominance has made it challenging for other startups to even raise the funding they would need to operate a viable challenger, said a Democratic strategist who spoke with Fast Company.
ActBlue has also become the de facto keeper of Democratic donors information, an advantage that makes it possible for people to seamlessly donate across campaigns without reentering that information. Another enity can rebuild that, but it would just take time, said the strategist, adding that thats time most campaigns dont have.
There are also risks inherent to experimenting with new technology. Wong, ActBlues vice president of engineering, noted that the platform saw unprecedented levels of traffic in 2024 without experiencing any outages, strain that newer platforms could struggle to withstand.
And in a political climate in which the president appears hellbent on punishing perceived enemies, theres no guarantee a more diversified landscape would be any safer from political attacks. If they’re going to come after us, he said, they can come after anyone.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out Nov. 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on.The new notice comes after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November. That program helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries.“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the USDA notice says. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”The shutdown, which began Oct. 1, is now the second-longest on record. While the Republican administration took steps leading up to the shutdown to ensure SNAP benefits were paid this month, the cutoff would expand the impact of the impasse to a wider swath of Americans and some of those most in need unless a political resolution is found in just a few days.The administration blames Democrats, who say they will not agree to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate with them on extending expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans say Democrats must first agree to reopen the government before negotiation.Democratic lawmakers have written to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting to use contingency funds to cover the bulk of next month’s benefits.But a USDA memo that surfaced Friday says “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits.” The document says the money is reserved for such things such as helping people in disaster areas.It cited a storm named Melissa, which has strengthened into a major hurricane, as an example of why it’s important to have the money available to mobilize quickly in the event of a disaster.The prospect of families not receiving food aid has deeply concerned states run by both parties.Some states have pledged to keep SNAP benefits flowing even if the federal program halts payments, but there are questions about whether U.S. government directives may allow that to happen. The USDA memo also says states would not be reimbursed for temporarily picking up the cost.Other states are telling SNAP recipients to be ready for the benefits to stop. Arkansas and Oklahoma, for example, are advising recipients to identify food pantries and other groups that help with food.Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused Republicans and Trump of not agreeing to negotiate.“The reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly,” Murphy said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We could open up the government on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.”
Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press
Flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday, when the agency also reported staffing-related delays in Chicago, Washington and Newark, New Jersey.The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed and canceled in the coming days as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown.During an appearance on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures,” Duffy said more controllers were calling in sick as money worries compound the stress of an already challenging job.“Just yesterday, we had 22 staffing triggers. That’s one of the highest that we have seen in the system since the shutdown began. And that’s a sign that the controllers are wearing thin,” he said.The FAA said planes headed for Los Angeles were held at their originating airports starting at 11:42 a.m. Eastern time, and the agency lifted the ground stop at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.The hold did not appear to cause continuing problems at LAX; according to flight tracking website FlightAware, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field Airport saw a much bigger share of late arrivals due to what the FAA said were weather and equipment issues.Too few air traffic controllers per shift also caused takeoff and arrival disruptions Sunday at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport and Teteboro Airport, and at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Meyers, Florida, according to the FAA.On Sunday evening, the FAA also slowed traffic into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport because of traffic controller staffing.
Associated Press
The USDAs Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has announced two separate large-scale food recalls due to the same reason: possible contamination with metal fragments.
The first recall was for BBQ pork jerky and the second was for ready-to-eat frozen chicken products. Both notices were posted over the weekend.
In total, a combined 7.1 million pounds of the productswhich were distributed nationwide in both casesare included in the recalls. Heres what you need to know.
2.3 million pounds of BBQ pork jerky recalled
According to a notice posted by FSIS on Friday, October 24, a company called LSI, Inc. of Alpena, South Dakota, is recalling approximately 2.3 million pounds of a ready-to-eat Korean barbecue pork jerky product.
The product had the possibility of being contaminated with pieces of metal, according to the notice. The “wiry metal” fragments, according to the FSIS, were first detected by customers, who contacted the manufacturer.
LSI then found that the metal originated from the conveyor belt used in production, according to the FSIS notice.
The impacted product was sold under the brand name Golden Island.
Of particular concern is that the impacted pork jerky product has a very long shelf life of one year, which means individuals could have the products stored in their pantries now and for a long time to come. Here are the details of the recalled pork jerky product:
Product: 14.5-oz. and 16-oz. plastic pouches containing GOLDEN ISLAND fire-grilled PORK JERKY Korean BARBECUE recipe.
Best by dates: range from October 23, 2025, through September 23, 2026.
Lot numbers: various (see list linked below)
Establishment number: M279A
The FSIS has published the product labels and the full product list on its website.
The items were sold at Costco and Sams Club locations nationwide. Consumers are being urged to check their pantries and to dispose of the recalled products or return them for a refund.
4.9 million pounds of frozen chicken recalled
On Saturday, October 25, FSIS posted another recall notice regarding additional products that may have metal contamination.
This time, approximately 4.9 million pounds of ready-to-eat frozen chicken items from Hormel Foods Corporation were effected.
The products were distributed nationwide to HRI Commercial Food Service locations, which provide food to hotels, restaurants, and other institutions.
The FSIS notice says that these distributions occurred on various dates ranging from February 10, 2025, through September 19, 2025. However, though those dates have passed, as the product involves frozen chicken, it could still be in the freezers of hotels, restaurants, and other institutions.
As with the previous recall above, this recall was also initiated after multiple complaints from food-service customers who reported finding metal in their frozen chicken products.
As with the pork jerky recall, Hormel Foods determined that the metal originated from the conveyor belt used in production, the FSIS notice states.
The recall notice says that the following products are among those included in the recall:
13.9-lb. cases containing Hormel FIRE BRAISED MEATS ALL NATURAL BONELESS CHICKEN THIGH MEAT, with item code 65009 printed on the label.
13.8-lb. cases containing 3-oz.Hormel FIRE BRAISED MEATS ALL NATURAL BONELESS CHICKEN BREAST, with item code 77531 printed on the label.
13.8-lb. cases containing 4-oz.Hormel FIRE BRAISED MEATS ALL NATURAL BONELESS CHICKEN BREAST, with item code 46750 printed on the label.
23.8-lb. cases containing 5-oz.Hormel FIRE BRAISED MEATS ALL NATURAL BONELESS CHICKEN BREAST, with item code 86206 printed on the label.
13.95-lb. cases containing BONELESS CHICKEN BREAST WITH RIB MEAT, with item code 134394 printed on the label.
The labels of the recalled products and a detailed list of the recalled products with packaging dates can be found on the FSIS website. The recalled products have the establishment number P-223 printed on them.
Businesses that have the recalled products in their possession should not serve them; instead, they should throw them away.
“This product is only sold to foodservice customers and cannot be purchased directly by consumers,” Hormel said in a statement. “All customers that may have received the affected product have been properly notified.”
Conveyor belt to blame in both recalls
Of note regarding the two individual recalls, both notices reported that the metal originated from the conveyor belt used in production.
However, it is not known whether the products involved in the two recalls were produced in the same manufacturing facility.
A spokesperson for Hormel Foods Sales sent Fast Company a statement that repeated details included in the recall notice but did not identify the facility.
Fast Company has also reached out to Golden Island and the FSIS for additional details. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself.
Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman faces a rare leadership challenge: He is managing an organization that has announced its intention to spend $200 billion during the next 20 yearsdouble what the organization dispensed in its first 25 yearswhile working to permanently close its doors on December 31, 2045.
Suzman, who joined the foundation in 2007 as director of global development policy, advocacy, and special initiatives, and became CEO in 2020, says the finality and scale of his mandate actually provides clarity and focus. It allows us to be very predictable and reliable for the next two decades, he says. Thats a luxury for a CEO.
With clarity comes focus
The foundation announced it is sunsetting earlier this year, accelerating a shutdown that Suzman says had always been part of the organizations long-term plan. At the time of the announcement, chair and board member Bill Gates said the nonprofit would concentrate its efforts on three areas: ending preventable deaths of mothers and babies, eradicating deadly infectious diseases, and putting millions of people on the path to economic prosperity.
That means some programs will graduate, or be reworked. Some existing initiatives that fall outside the focus areas or may not be achievable by 2045 are moving into new partnerships. For example, the foundations work to foster technology and tools to expand economic opportunity for Americans is now part of NextLadder Ventures, a coalition of philanthropies including Ballmer Group (cofounded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer), Valhalla Foundation, Stand Together, and others.
Leadership through change
I asked Suzman about leading a team of more than 2,000 mission-driven employeessome of whom are seeing projects deprioritizedthrough this lengthy transition. He contends that the foundation has always had to make hard choices. When youre part of an institution that has a wider set of goals, there will be trade-offstrade-offs about how we allocate our internal resources, how we allocate Bills voice. We work on this by trying to pull people up to our shared set of goals, he says.
He also echoed a common refrain I hear from virtually every CEO trying to manage an organization through massive change: You can never over-communicate enough, he says. You have to keep driving that message through in every possible channel, internal and external, to help people see the connections and understand that you know how they all come together toward the greater goal of the foundation.
The foundation’s phase out comes in the wake of major changes to its structure. In 2024, Warren Buffett, who has donated $48 billion since 2006, said the foundation would not receive a contribution upon his death. That same year, Melinda French Gates resigned as co-chair after 24 years, receiving $12.5 billion from the foundation for her independent philanthropic work. In January 2025, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was renamed Gates Foundation, with Bill Gates becoming sole chair.
Message to the next generation
The announcement also coincides with challenges to some of the causes the foundation has championed, including vaccines and international aid. Suzman notes that the Gates Foundation is now the largest funder of the World Health Organization (WHO) after President Donald J. Trumps executive order withdrawing from the WHO.
Suzman contends that philanthropy shouldnt solely provide resources for health and humanitarian organizations that governments have historically supported. But he also urges a new generation of business executives and founders to begin their giving journeys.
Im the beneficiary of the amazing generosity of Bill, Warren, and Melinda . . . they themselves frequently talk about how personally fulfilling philanthropy is to them, Suzman says. He adds: We only hope therell be more following our example. The world needs it desperately.”
Sailing into the sunset
Have you ever had to lead the winding down of a company or organization? How did you do it, and how did you keep employees engaged? Send your stories to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com for possible use in a future newsletter.
Read more: the business of giving
How to build charitable giving into your business model
Is the era of the benevolent billionaire really over?
The top 50 U.S. donors gave $16.2 billion to charity in 2024
Leaders are praised for seeing around corners and told to skate to where the puck is going. But what if you cant even see your own feet, let alone a puck or a distant corner?
Todays volatility and uncertainty obscure any clear path to the future, and the forecast isnt improving any time soon. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, 52% of experts expect an unsettled two-year horizon, 31% anticipate turbulence, and 5% foresee storms.
Even if the weather were clear, setting a direction of travel is increasingly difficult as leaders face more complex problems with no obvious or easy solution. Close to 60% of business executives admit that they are missing opportunities because they cant make decisions fast enough. However bleak the landscape, there is a way to lead even when you cant see the future. This requires letting go of standard practices and building a new skill.
What No Longer Serves You
Leadership has long meant setting a compelling destination, planning the route, and mobilizing people to move. The classic tool kitforecast, plan, executeassumes a knowable future. With todays complexity, forecasts are guesses and plans expire fast. Leaders who arent shifting away from a predictplanact approach will see their impact erodeand their well-being with it.
The reason sits in the brain. When complexity is high, trying to predict accurately and act decisively strains a leaders cognitive loadthe mental effort required to process information and choose. Its the difference between running on a clear, lit path and running on dark ice with crosswinds: far more effort, far less progress. Add time pressure and constant digital distractions, and cognitive load spikes further.
When cognitive load stays high, brain fog sets in, decision speed drops, details slip, and big-picture comprehension narrows. In short, youre not the leader you intend to be. Its time to work differently.
Awareness: The Quality That Changes How You Lead
We cant control the pace of the world, but we can change how we meet it. We can move from a predict-plan-act approach to a stop-sense-adapt approach. The key to this approach is awareness, the ability to notice what is happeningin yourself, your team, and the larger systemand choose accordingly. With greater awareness, you enhance your perception of emotions, biases, strengths, and limitations and can read the dynamics of the team, the organization, and the market. Rather than constantly seeking answers, you stop, notice, and let answers arise.
Unfortunately, our awareness is often scattered, crowded out by biases, fears, and clouded perceptions. Roughly 45% of our everyday behaviors are habitual (often outside conscious awareness), and our noisy, information-filled world clouds awareness even more. However, the case for building awareness is strong: in recent Potential Project research, teams led by highly aware leaders reported 78% higher trust in the companys leadership, 57% higher psychological safety, and 56% higher commitment to the company.
For leaders, mastering three mindsets makes awareness actionable and achievable: presence to anchor us in the moment, clarity to see options and define a path forward, and adaptability to navigate new paths even when uncomfortable.
Three Mindsets for the Moment
Presence: Stay in the Moment
Presence is the ability to be fully attentive in the momentwith ourselves, the people in front of us, the task at hand, or whats happening around us. Our research indicates that we are distracted even when we think we are paying attention, about 37% of the time. But when we can be present in the moment rather than being pulled by a million thoughts, things slow down and its easier to focus our attention on the things that matter, not just the things that squeak the loudest.
Clarity: Find a Path
Clarity is the ability to rise above uncertainty and chaos rather than trying to solve for them. Its not about having clear answers all of the time, but about having a clear mind that can better find the signal within the noise. Clarity of mind feels spacious and calm. It is the difference between being in the clouds and feeling overwhelmed versus being able to step back into the vastness of the sky and see the clouds more clearly. It is a welcome alternative when nearly 2/3 of leaders say they experience information overload from trying to keep up with texts, chats, emails, and meetings. Clarity helps us to see ways forward, even when it is foggy
Adaptability: Navigate the Path
Adaptability is the ability to shift approaches as things change. Adaptable leaders accept new circumstances or unfamiliar territory with openness rather than holding too tightly to familiar routines or past experiences. Adaptable leaders often believe that change is inevitable, natural, and a source of growth. With a mindset of adaptability, leaders can navigate more confidently down new paths, even when the unfamiliar feels hard.
The marriage of Awareness and AI
As we regularly witness, AI can scan oceans of data, summarize patterns, and surface signals faster than any team. This is a huge advantage for leaders. For example, AI can give us consistent, data-informed feedback on our leadership and correct for blind spots we have about our strengths and weaknesses. AI can synthesize data about how our organization and employees are doing and surface trends, opportunities, and challenges that may have escaped our notice.
However, AI is a leaders advantage only if paired with awareness. Awareness adds the human context machines dont hold: history, social dynamics, values, and the lived experience of people affected by decisions. It also keeps us alert to borrowed biasassumptions in the data or model that would steer us wrong if left unquestioned. Used together, AI expands what we can see; awareness ensures we interpret wisely.
Here are a few ways to start strengthening your skills of awareness, with and without the help of technology:
Dont outsource connection to yourself and others. Take advantage of devices that help monitor your levels of distraction and track heart rate variability, pulse, and stress levels. These can help us be more present with ourselves and take corrective action to be more present with others. But over-relying on devices to tell us how we feel diminishes our capacity for self-awareness. Similarly, using tools for feedback on a team shouldnt prevent you from reading a room, understanding others feelings, and making a connection.
Clear the mental clutter. There is so much already competing with our attention, and the abundance of AI resources can get overwhelming. It is harder to practice awareness when our brains are full. The best approach is a both/and: use AI as a filter and summarizer, for example, but watch that it doesnt tip over into a source of distraction.
Try new things: When we implement new routines or learn new skills, we become more adaptable, capable of seeing habitual patterns and breaking free of them. Experiment with AI-enabled apps that can suppot you in this pursuit in fun and rewarding ways. But dont hesitate to try something very simple like brushing your teeth with your nondominant hand or taking a new route to the grocery store.
You dont need a perfect forecast to leadjust a better beam
When visibility is low, speedor constant actionis not a leadership virtue. Better to change the way you see and respond. Awareness widens your field of view and keeps you oriented to what needs to be doneone confident step at a time. When we stop to be present, sense the signals with clarity, and adapt in short, honest moves, we demonstrate to our teams that we are steering with care.
It feels like they match anything.
Black. Silver. White. Cream. All rendered in gloss and knit. I wasnt sure how the silhouette would look in person when I first saw it in photos from Junya Watanabes Fall/Winter 2024-25 show. But they made my stomach churn in just the right way.
I needed them. And so did a lot of other people.
The New Balance 1906L launched last year, kicking off a new type of shoe: the sneaker loafer, aka (and please never say this term aloud) the snoafer. With a loafer silhouette, technical fabrics, and bouncy foam outsoles, they represented a new mix of formal wear and street style. Nike, Hoka, and Puma all quickly followed suit with snoafers of their own. While in Madrid, I snagged some by Hispanitas for my wifeonly learning that they were the stores last pair as I checked out.
Snoafers did more than redefine what we consider a sneaker since launching last year; they resuscitated loafers more broadly. Karis Munday, an analyst at the fashion trend firm Edited, says loafer sales are up 33% year over year for men and 28% for women this fall, in a surge she doesnt see fizzling out soon. The sneaker-inspired iteration will be a must-have investment, offering a smart-casual solution that serves equally well in a business casual environment as it does for weekend wear, she shares over email, calling the 1906L the blueprint for the industry.
But how did New Balance know it could pull this idea off?
A loafer is a preppy shoe. New Balance has preppy connotations, says Charlotte Lee, the design manager at New Balance who created the 1906L. Its a Venn diagram . . . where the center is the sneaker loafer.
New Balance 1906L [Photo: New Balance]
The evolution of streetwear
Lee is a trained footwear designer who has been at New Balance for over a decade. Shes obsessed with aesthetics and culture, but says shes always been intimidated by the streetwear side of her profession. I still feel like an outsider, even though I’m obviously, well and truly, an insider, she says.
Indeed, once disregarded by the fashion industry, streetweara mash-up of fashion aesthetics stemming from city subcultures like hip-hop and skatehas been on a 20-year ascendancy into mass culture. Now its become part of the lexicon of dress, often dissociated with any cultural origin.
In 2023, I was at the Musinsa Empty shop in Seoul when I pulled a ripped, decaled pair of jeans off the rack and mentioned to the shopkeeper that they had a street vibe. You could trace the pants’ visual lineage to punk rock in London (literal street style), or more recently, to Virgil Ablohs Pyrex Vision, which started by screen-printing on deadstock jeans. The manager looked at me blankly, saying, Thats not street.
Sneakers are the greatest motif in streetwearand theyve very much become the mass-produced art of our time as sculptures molded for our feet. As I debated with designer Jeff Staple recently, theres no certainty that such a motif will keep its relevance. It seems like a dozen new sneakers fill our feeds each day, and no art movement lasts forever. Impressionism and surrealism both burned out within 20 years.
Designing the New Balance 1906L
The 1906L is so interesting because it offers a thesis on how sneakers can evolve to stay relevant. It’s a rare project that was able to cut through the noise to redefine the industry. And perhaps it was Lees point of view, as an insider-outsider who is not too beholden to tradition, that was so crucial in manifesting it. “For me, it’s not just looking at streetwear; it’s looking at all facets of culture to be able to try and inform the shoes I’m working on,” Lee says. “[The 1906L] was born from the concept of integration, the juxtaposition between two worlds: the influence of formal dressing within society and culture, and fashion and trend.”As Lee tracked a bit of buzz around loafersspotting them here and there across the luxury market in the early 2020sshe discovered her perfect juxtaposition for sneakers.
It was an indulgent project for me, because it was cheeky. And it was a bit like, Can we? Can’t we? Shall we? she recalls. But once the concept was in her brain, she realized the form immediately. This is not a flex, but I literally drew one with CAD [computer-aided-design software], she says, laughing.
Truly, her first draft made it to production, minus a few slight adjustments. When she initially presented the design to the team, the response was a rare, simple, unanimous yes. This was 18 months or more before the shoe was actually released.
She says, only upon further reflection on the project, that the shoe solidified so smoothly because it just had to be made this way to feel authentically New Balance. The loafer silhouette already spoke for itself. And the rest was about framing that loafer with New Balance performance DNA.
It had to be mesh initially . . . like, it had to have that kind of classic silver overlay, the 2000s running aesthetic, she says. That was all I needed to do, because I knew then the rest was all New Balance DNA, like identity, and I kind of squished it in and made sure it fit in the shape and within the boundary of what a loafer is.
More probing reveals a touch more thought, however quickly it came together. When I ask why my shoes feel like they match anything in my closet, she notes that was by design. She pulled the blacks, whites, and even the silver in my shoe from New Balances existing line of lifestyle sneakers, like the 1906R. These colors have already been proven for a wide variety of fashion contexts.
riginalGrand [Photo: Cole Haan]
A trend that wont die
Notably, Lee wasnt the first to mash up formal shoes and sneakers. That idea likely belongs to designer Salehe Bembury, who stuck EVA foam on Cole Haan wingtips in 2014 for his riginalGrand, but the concept never quite gelled to reach a larger scale.
Lee had a feeling the shoe would be a hit due to its polarizing, disjointed identity. Loafers are among the most versatile formal shoeone that can be dressed up more than a boat shoebut are also easier to doff and don than a New Balance sneaker. I wear them all the time, not because Im being self-indulgent, but because I’m lazy, she says. Like, you just slip your foot in, and off you go.
But she was also worried that the shoe was arriving too late, and that loafers would already be over by the time it shipped. It turned out to be the opposite.
Were way past launch, and I think it’s still continuing, she says. I think what we’re seeing now is a diversification of integration . . . how can we integrate two worlds that shouldn’t belong, but when they’re in perfect harmony, they do belong?
I actually believe its not just about mashing up two unlikely ideas. I think the snoafer has given us one of the first truly convincing theses on how the sneaker can evolve, and how we can reconcile our penchant for foams with wider, more formal visions of self-expression.
Knwls Air Max Muse [Photo: Nike]
The Knwls Air Max Musea collaboration between Nike and the London fashion house Knwlsfeels like the perfect acceleration of concept. At first glance, you might call it a ballet sneaker, and it is. The ballet sneaker is partly inspired by the ballet flats of dance class, but when you really study where their silhouettes are going on the chunkier end of the outsole equationlike the Muse, youll also see the almost hoofed posture of a Tabi heel, and a smooth shadow of a loafer.
Sneex (created by the founder of Spanx), like other head-on attempts at a high-heel sneaker, are pretty cringe. Id argue thats because they werent refined within the established design language and limitations of the sneaker. Meanwhile, the Muse is basically a heel for the sneaker ageright down to its sharply pointed toe boxand Id suggest the Simone Rocha tracker ballet flat verges toward the same idea.
Today, were witnessing an evolution of the sneaker itself, born from a culture finally prepared to reconcile its technical materials and motifsnot simply as fodder for athletic performance or fashion trend, but as a tradition of design thats essential to craft and culture alike.
Just please dont call it a snoafer.
When I imagine the future of space commerce, the first image that comes to mind is a farmers market on the International Space Station. This doesnt exist yet, but space commerce is a growing industry. The Space Foundation, a nonprofit organization for education and advocacy of space, estimates that the global space economy rose to $613 billion in 2024, up nearly 8% from 2023, and 250 times larger than all business at farmers markets in the United States. This number includes launch vehicles, satellite hardware, and services provided by these space-based assets, such as satellite phone or internet connection.
Companies involved in spaceflight have been around since the start of the space age. By the 1980s, corporate space activity was gaining traction. President Ronald Reagan saw the need for a federal agency to oversee and guide this industry and created the Office of Space Commerce, or OSC.
So what exactly does this office do and why is it important?
As a space scientist, I am interested in how the U.S. regulates commercial activities in space. In addition, I teach a course on space policy. In class, we talk about the OSC and its role in the wider regulatory landscape affecting commercial use of outer space.
The OSCs focus areas
The Office of Space Commerce, an office of about 50 people, exists within the Department of Commerces National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. To paraphrase its mission statement, its chief purpose is to enable a robust U.S. commercial interest in outer space.
OSC has three main focus areas. First, it is the office responsible for licensing and monitoring how private U.S. companies collect and distribute orbit-based images of Earth. There are many companies launching satellites with special cameras to look back down at the Earth these days. Companies offer a variety of data products and services from such imagery, for instance, to improve agricultural land use.
A second primary job of OSC is space advocacy. OSC works with the other U.S. government agencies that also have jurisdiction over commercial use of outer space to make the regulatory environment easier. This includes working with the Federal Aviation Administration on launch licensing, the Federal Communications Commission on radio wavelength usage, and the Environmental Protection Agency on rules about the hazardous chemicals in rocket fuel.
This job also includes coordinating with other countries that allow companies to launch satellites, collect data in orbit, and offer space-based services.
In 2024, for example, the OSC helped revise the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, one of the main documents restricting the shipping of advanced technologies out of the country. This change removed some limitations, allowing American companies to export certain types of spacecraft to three countries: Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The OSC also coordinates commercial satellites flight paths in near-Earth space, which is its third and largest function. The Department of Defense keeps track of thousands of objects in outer space and issues alerts when the probability of a collision gets high. In 2018, President Donald Trump issued Space Policy Directive-3, which included tasking OSC to take this role over for nongovernment satellitesthat is, those owned by companies, not NASA or the military. The Department of Defense wants out of the job of traffic management involving privately owned satellites, and Trumps directive in 2018 started the process of handing off this task to OSC.
To prevent satellites from colliding, OSC has been developing the traffic coordination system for space, known as TraCSS. It went into beta testing in 2024 and has some of the companies with the largest commercial constellationssuch as SpaceXs Starlinkparticipating. Progress on this has been slower than anticipated, though, and an audit in 2024 revealed that the plan is way behind schedule and perhaps still years away.
Elevating OSC
Deep in the text of Trumps August 13, 2025, executive order called Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry, theres a directive to elevate OSC to report directly to the office of the secretary of Commerce. This would make OSC equivalent to its current overseer, NOAA, with respect to importance and priority within the Department of Commerce. It would give OSC higher stature in setting more of the rules regarding commercial use of space, and it would make space commerce more visible across the broader economy.
So why did Trump include this line about elevating OSC in his August 13 executive order?
Back in 2018, Trump issued Space Policy Directive-2 during his first term, which included a task to create the Space Policy Advancing Commerce Enterprise Administration, or SPACE. SPACE would have been an entity reporting directly to the secretary of Commerce. While it was proposed as a bill in the House of Representatives later that year, it never became law.
The August 13 executive order essentially directs the Department of Commerce to make this move now. Should the secretary of Commerce enact the order, it would bypass the role of Congress in promoting OSC. The 60-day window that Trump placed in the executive order for making this change has closed, but with the government shutdown it is unclear whether the elevation of OSC might still occur.
Troubles for OSC
While all of this sounds good for promoting space as a place for commercial activity, OSC has been under stress in 2025. In February, the Department of Government Efficiency targeted NOAA for cuts, including firing eight people from OSC. Because about half of the people working in OSC are contractors, this represented a 30% reduction of force.
In March, Trumps presidential budget request for the 2026 fiscal year proposed a cut of 85% of the $65 million annual budget of OSC. In July, space industry leaders urged Congress to restore funding to OSC.
The August 13 executive order appeared to be good news for OSC. On September 9, however, Bloomberg reported that the Department of Commerce requested a 40% rescission to OSCs fiscal year 2025 budget.
Rescissions are clawbacks of funds already approved and appropriated by Congress. The promised funding is essentially put on hold. Once proposed by the president, rescissions have to be voted on by both chambers of Congress to be enacted. This must occur within 45 days, or before the end of the fiscal year, which was September 30.
This rescission request came so close to that deadline that Congress did not act to stop it. As a result, OSC lost this funding. The loss could mean additional cutbacks to staff and perhaps even a shrinking of its focus areas.
Will OSC be elevated? Will OSC be restructured or even dismantled? The future is still uncertain for this office.
Michael Liemohn is a professor of climate and space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
