Bodyarmor just unveiled the brands biggest-ever packaging refresh after nearly 15 years on the shelf.
The sports drink brands new look coincides with the debut of a new national TV advertising campaign called Choose Better, which will air beginning this weekend during the National Hockey League playoffs and stars professional athletes including NHL all-star Connor McDavid and Womens National Basketball Association champion Sabrina Ionescu.
Bodyarmor says the rebrand was a nearly yearlong effort and includes newly designed labels across the entire portfolio, placing nutritional claims more boldly on the front of the packaging, a refreshed wordmark, and a brand new icon that evokes a battle shield. The company developed the new visual identity with Jones Knowles Ritchie, the agency behind the rebrands for Impossible Foods and Burger King.
The investments in a new look and Bodyarmors largest-ever media investment reflect the companys view that the nearly $20 billion sports and performance drinks category has gotten more competitive and that consumers are craving more functional products, which now include newer innovations like rapid rehydration and single-serve powder sticks.
This is a consumer thats evolving and we need to evolve to continue to have that edge, says Federico Muyshondt, CEO of Bodyarmor Sports Nutrition.
Coca-Cola is the second-largest sports drink seller in the U.S. with the beverage giants Powerade and Bodyarmor brands, the latter fully acquired in an all-cash deal valued at $5.6 billion in 2021. But PepsiCos Gatorade still commands roughly two-thirds of the market, according to beverage insights publication Beverage Digest.
Volume of Cokes sports drinks slipped 1% in 2024 from the prior year, while the trademark Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, sparkling flavors, and tea all grew. Muyshondt says the sports drink category has doubled in size over the past decade and will continue to grow in the years to come, adding that his north star goal is to become the top sellermeaning he wants to usurp Gatorades market dominance. Thats what were focused on, says Muyshondt.
Market researcher Mintel has estimated that total sports drink category sales are projected to reach $27.5 billion by 2028.
Bodyarmor Chief Marketing Officer Tom Gargiulo says the new packaging will help differentiate the brands more expansive product range, which includes the mainstay sports drink along with low-calorie and zero-sugar options, as well as an alkaline water and Flash I.V. Bodyarmor also incorporated real imagery of fruit on pack.
[Photo: Bodyarmor]
We wanted to make sure that flavor was front and center and super prominent at the top of the bottle, says Gargiulo.
Bodyarmor says 59% of consumers always read the ingredients or nutrition facts on new foods and beverages they buy, citing data from food industry marketing researcher the Hartman Group. That helped influence the decision to list more nutritional claims and ingredients for the core sports drink range, including the use of coconut water, natural flavors and sweeteners, vitamins, and even the precise level of electrolytes in each drink.
Laurie Demeritt, CEO of the Hartman Group, says consumers have gotten more savvy about hydration and understanding that not all beverages quench thirst equally. This idea of hydration has really changed, in terms of how consumers perceive it, says Demeritt. It used to be: I’m thirsty and I need to hydrate. Hydration now has this multifaceted meaning in most consumers minds.
Demeritt cautions that while consumers do want to know more about what food and drinks they consume, typically only one or two considerations are top of mind before making a purchase. We have to guard against a proliferation of claims being made across packaging, says Demeritt. Theres limited real estate.
Bodyarmor acknowledges that it will need to do some work educating consumers on electrolytes. The standard Bodyarmor sports drink has 1,390 mg of electrolytes, but that figure isnt as easily digestible to consumers as more familiar numbers for calories and sugar. We talk a lot about the science of hydration, why hide it in the back? asks Muyshondt. This category has existed for 65 years and people are not familiar with the number of electrolytes.
Electrolytes come from the food and fluids that humans consume and include sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, and calcium. They are essential for basic life functions, including controlling the nervous system and keeping muscles functioning.
Katherine Brooking, a registered dietitian, says food industry trade shows like Expo West are often inundated with powders and drinks that make big claims regarding their ability to replenish electrolytes. But she says electrolytes can also be obtained through a balanced diet that includes fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans, and whole grains.
Always look at labels and be mindful of the calories you might be consuming in these products and the amount of sugar, because they can get really high, really quick, says Brooking.
Sabrina Niland, VP of innovation at Bodyarmor, says the brand has also sought to differentiate itself from the crowd by selling sports drink mainstays like fruit punch, but also more unique combinations like strawberry banana and peach mango. What we have found is people that love Bodyarmor, really love the unique combinations of flavors that we have, adds Niland.
[Image: Bodyarmor]
The Choose Better campaign will also be featured throughout programming by sports media website Barstool Sports, in social media content created by the comedy baseball team the Savannah Bananas, and in partnership with sports and comedy group Dude Perfect.
Created by Bodyarmors in-house team and the advertising agency Cartwright, the TV spot depicts a dystopian world with athletes mindlessly going through the motions of lifting weights, running on treadmills, and riding on stationary bikes, always with an unbranded, glowing orange sports drink beside them. But the scene quickly changes and shows athletes running outside, on a basketball court, and biking through the forest, all powered by Bodyarmor, of course.
Prior Bodyarmor ad spots focused exclusively on star athletes and as a result, the brand says it struggled a bit with relatability. The new campaign features McDavid, Ionescu, and the NFLs CeeDee Lamb and Joe Burrow, but Bodyarmor is also featuring nonprofessional athletes.
We see an opportunity to speak to people outside of hardcore sports, says Gargiulo. Now, were really focusing on everyday people as part of the campaign.
U.S President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s termination “cannot come fast enough”, while calling for the U.S. central bank to cut interest rates.
Trump, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, reiterated his stance on rate cuts, saying that Powell “should have lowered interest rates, like the (European Central Bank), long ago, but he should certainly lower them now.”
The Fed’s benchmark interest rate is currently 4.25%-4.50%, where it has been since December following several rate cuts late last year.
Trump’s comments come a day after Powell said at an event at the Economic Club of Chicago that the Fed’s “independence is very widely understood and supported in Washington and in Congress where it really matters.”
Trump in his post said Powell was “always too late and wrong”, and critiqued the speech Powell made on Wednesday, calling it “another, and typical, complete mess!”
Powell, who on Wednesday spoke for the first time since Trump paused some tariffs, also characterized the ongoing market volatility of recent weeks as a logical processing of the Trump administration’s dramatic shifts in trade policy not a sign of stress that warranted a Fed response.
Powell warned Trump’s tariff policies risked pushing inflation and employment further from the central bank’s goals and said the Fed was “well positioned to wait for greater clarity”.
Angela Christy and Gursimran Kaur, Reuters
Yesterday, Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: HTZ) became one of the best-performing automotive-related stocks of the year after the car rental companys stock surged more than 56% in a single trading session. Today, the stock is up again by a double-digit percentage in premarket trading at the time of this writing. But why? Heres what you need to know.
HTZ shares surged 56.44% yesterday
Yesterday, Hertz had one of its best single-gain days in a long time. The companys stock price surged 56.44% in a single session after it was revealed that billionaire investor Bill Ackmans hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, took a sizable stake in the rental car company.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, Pershing Square Capital Management announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Wednesday that it had acquired 12.7 million HTZ shares, representing about 4.1% of the companys total stock.
Once the news went public, HTZ shares surged, rising by a total of $2.06 for the day to end at $5.71a rise of 56.44%.
Pershing Square Capital Management often takes activist positions in companies whose stock they purchase. The hedge funds foray into HTZ shares seems to be signaling to some investors that Ackmans firm may attempt to influence the direction of Hertzwhich some obviously see as a good sign considering the that challenges the car rental company has faced in recent years.
Fast Company reached out to Pershing Square and Hertz for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
Hertz woes
As noted by the Wall Street Journal, Hertz was one of the original meme stocks to emerge around the time of the pandemic. The company filed for bankruptcy after the pandemic hitunderstandable considering that travel was screeching to a halt, which meant that both consumers and business people had less need to rent a car.
In 2021, amidst its recovery push, Hertz staged an uplist initial public offeringmoving from an over-the-counter (OTC) market to the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Around the same time, Hertz decided to go all-in on the electric vehicle boom sweeping the nation, and it placed an order for 100,000 Teslas in an attempt to remake its image from that of a gas-guzzling car rental company to a modern, environmentally friendly tech-adjacent one.
Unfortunately for Hertz, renters didnt take as well to the idea of EVs as the company had anticipated. One of the big drawbacks in renters’ minds was the uncertainty of whether they could find a charging station along their route. This led to fears that they may run out of power while heading to their destination.
By 2024, Hetz was actively selling its fleet of electric vehicles, taking a depreciation hit on each car sold. Hertzs failed EV gamble led to the companys stock being downgraded shortly after.
However, earlier this year, Hertz got an unexpected boost from what many would consider an unlikely sourcePresident Donald Trumps tariffs.
In late March, the companys stock price surged 20% in a single day. The reasoning behind this surge was that if car prices were about to jump due to Trumps tariffs, the rental cars Hertz sells after use would likely become more appealing to buyers, who may now be seeking out used cars to purchase instead of new ones.
But 2025 hasnt been all smooth sailing for Hertz either. Just a day before Pershing Square Capital Management announced its stake in Hertz, the car rental company announced that hackers may have stolen some of its customers’ social security numbers and credit card details.
Still, investors have now seemed to have happily shrugged off that latest bit of bad news after learning Bill Ackmans hedge fund has taken a large stake in the company.
HTZ shares up again in premarket today
As of the time of this writing, HTZ shares are up another 10% in premarket trading this morninga healthy gain in addition to the companys massive surge yesterday. Currently, shares are sitting around $6.31 each.
Year-to-date, HTZ shares have climbed 56% since yesterdays close. However, despite their recent surge, Hertz stock has been hammered pretty badly over the past several years.
As of yesterdays close, Hertz stock was still down 13% over the past 12 months. And over the past five years, the companys stock price has fallen by over 74%, based on yesterdays close.
A federal judge says some nonprofits awarded billions for a so-called green bank to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects cannot have their contracts scrapped and must have access to some of the frozen money. The ruling is a defeat for President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, which argues the program is rife with financial mismanagement.The order late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan “gives us a chance to breathe after the EPA unlawfully and without due process terminated our awards and blocked access to funds that were appropriated by Congress and legally obligated,” said Climate United CEO Beth Bafford.The lawsuit by Climate United Fund and other groups contends that the EPA, Administrator Lee Zeldin and Citibank, which held the grant money, illegally blocked the funds awarded last year and had jeopardized the organizations’ operations.Chutkan said Citibank must provide the money that was due to the nonprofits before the EPA had frozen their accounts in mid-February. The EPA immediately appealed.The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, commonly referred to as a “green bank,” was authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under Democratic President Joe Biden. Its goals run counter to the Trump administration’s opposition to climate-friendly policies and its embrace of fossil fuels. Zeldin quickly made the bank a target, characterizing the $20 billion in grants as a “gold bar” scheme marred by conflicts of interest and potential fraud.A federal prosecutor resigned after being asked to open a criminal investigation, saying there was not enough evidence to move ahead. The FBI and Treasury Department, in coordination with the EPA, pressured Citibank to freeze the grants, which it did, according to the nonprofits.Last month, Zeldin announced the termination of the grants, saying “well documented incidents of misconduct, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud raise significant concerns and pose unacceptable risk.”Chutkan paused that move, saying the government provided no significant evidence of wrongdoing. But the Republican administration, in a recent filing, asserted it was allowed to end the contracts based on oversight concerns and shifting priorities.“EPA’s new admission that it ‘did not terminate for Plaintiffs’ noncompliance’ confirms that EPA’s invocation of ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ was arbitrary and pretextual” the nonprofits said in a court filing.Molly Vaseliou, the EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs, contended that the court lacked the power to reinstate the money. She did not provide any new evidence and repeated unsubstantiated allegations of program abuse and conflicts of interest.“We couldn’t be more confident in the merits of our appeal,” she said in a statement.The government has told the court the case is “just a run-of-the-mill (albeit large) contract dispute.”That argument is important because it could move the case to a different court that can only award a lump sum and not force the government to keep the grants in place.
The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
Michael Phillis, Associated Press
The skies over New York City may soon get even more crowded as electric air taxi company Archer Aviation is planning to launch a network that connects the citys major and regional airports with vertiports in Manhattan.
The company, which is teaming up with United Airlines for the effort, announced the plans on Thursday. It hopes to connect Manhattan with six airports in the areaLaGuardia, JFK, Newark, and regional airports, Republic, Teterboro, and Westchesterwith flights as short as five minutes.
Archer’s Midnight aircraft could save passengers hours when trying to get between those airports or the three vertiports in Manhattan, according to the company. And the partnership with United Airlines would allow travelers to book those flights as a sort of add-on to their traditional inbound or outbound flight from one of the participating airports.
For example, if you live in Manhattan and are booking a United flight out of JFK, you can book a flight from the Downtown Skyport to JFK as part of the booking process.
[Image: Archer Aviation]
The New York City air taxi network is the third such network in the U.S. that Archer has announced so far, with the other two being in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Archer Aviation CCO Nikhil Goel says that the company is currently working out the final details of getting those networks online with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
There arent too many steps left, Goel says, adding that Midnight air taxis could be flying people around New York, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area as soon as next year.
Looking up
If and when regulatory all the regulatory hurdles will be cleared is anyone’s guess, but should that day come, Archer may not be the only player soaring above the Big Apple. Its competitor Joby Aviation is also planning to launch service in New York City, even showing off its aircraft at an event in Grand Central Terminal late last year.
Theres also the potential that the networks could expand. Well start with nine nodes in the New York area, Goel says. Thats the three vertiports in Manhattan, the three major airports, and the three regionalsthat covers a very large percentage of the people who live and work in the metropolitan area.
When Archer gets a better sense of where more demand for its flights lies, it could expand to other nodes in the area, and the same goes for other cities, too.
As for pricing, Goel says that the goal is to get to a place where air taxi flights are priced similarly to an Uber ride.
For now, the goal is to open and speed up transit options, according to Adam Goldstein, Archers founder and CEO.
“[The] drive from Manhattan to any of these airports can be painful, taking one, sometimes two hours,” Goldstein said in a statement. “We want to change that by giving residents and visitors the option to complete trips in mere minutes.”
I founded my company nearly two decades ago. As a bootstrapper, it was initially just me, but soon enough we grew to a dozen people, then a few dozen, then a hundred, and so on.
In the early days, I remember feeling confident in my hard skills, like product development and growth strategy. But soft skills were uncharted territory.
So I did what you do: practiced the tough conversations and speeches in front of the mirror. It helpedpreparation is half the battlebut sometimes I imagine how much faster my leadership skills would have developed if I had real-time feedback. Thats one of the features of AI-powered leadership platforms.
For todays businesses, leadership training is more important than ever. Cornell Tech lecturer Keith Cowing recently noted that simply completing tasks will hold less value in an AI-driven future, while judgment and leadership will become increasingly critical. He added that those with strong judgment will be significantly more rewarded than those who rely solely on task execution.
Its no wonder that tech giants and startups alike are tossing their hats into this burgeoning AI industry, from LinkedIn Learnings AI-powered coaching to newer arrivals like CodeSignal and Tenor.
As CEO of Jotform, Im leveraging these training tools myself, but Im even more excited to see how they will help executives and employees at all levels to advance in their careers. Heres a closer look at the power of AI-powered leadership training.
A more effective way to develop essential skills
For enterprises across the globe, soft skills are more important than ever. According to the World Economic Forums The Future of Jobs Report 2025, leadership and social influence are among the top three core skills required by employers, highlighting the rising importance of human-centric abilities in the rapidly evolving job market.
While out-of-the-box training solutions often fall short (and can be less than stimulating), AI-powered leadership training offers tailored, hands-on learning experiences. You can work on the skills and address the challenges unique to your position and organization.
CodeSignals AI-powered Conversation Simulation solution, for example, leverages generative AI and voice models to create realistic conversational partners. Users engage in dynamic conversations with AI partners and simulate potential situations. They can practice invaluable skills like delivering feedback, active listening, and conflict resolution.
Its the next best thing to real-world practice. While the AI-powered leadership development platform Tenor offers training in common scenarios, users can also work with the company to develop organization-specific situations and incorporate their companys distinctive leadership philosophies.
Traditional leadership training modules often feel more like staged performances than genuine learning experiences.
Imagine standing in front of your peers, tasked with role-playing a difficult conversation. For some, its an engaging exercise. For others, its an exercise in self-consciousness. (Like that time I had the brilliant idea of enrolling in an improv comedy classnot my most comfortable experience.)
The beauty of AI-powered leadership training is that it removes this pressure. Instead of performing for an audience, youre practicing with an AI partnerfree from judgment, free to focus on developing real skills.
At Jotform, we take an automation-first approach: If a process can be automated, we do it. If a solution scales, even better. AI-powered leadership training embodies both principles. Its accessible to employees at every levelfrom top executives and middle managers to ambitious entry-level employees.
And because its scalable, as your company grows, more employees can tap into these resources, building a steady pipeline of future leaders.
Best of all, AI-driven programs are often more cost-effective than traditional leadership workshops, making high-quality training available without breaking the bank.
AI is transforming leadership training by making it more adaptive, personalized, and scalable.
These platforms dont just offer cookie-cutter lessons. They analyze individual strengths and weaknesses, consider your companys unique circumstances, and provide tailored simulations and real-time feedback.
Todays most successful leaders arent just keeping up with the latest AI advancementstheyre using it to boost their decision-making, innovation, and learning.
By combining AI-driven tools and traditional training methods, companies can develop stronger, more prepared leaders who are ready to navigate as fast-changing business landscape.
More than 60,000 federal workers were dismissed during the first two months of the Trump administration with more staff reductions expected in the coming months. Many are mid-career employees who have worked for the government for a decade or more, making it more challenging for them to make the case that their skills are transferrable to the private sector.
Its an identity shift, says Arianny Mercedes, founder of Revamped, a New York City-based career consultancy. For many of these professionals, their roles werent just jobs; they were commitments to public service, she says. When someones identity is deeply tied to government service, being laid off or pivoting into a new industry can feel like losing a part of themselves, she adds.
However, experts agree that mid-career, federal employees who suddenly find themselves looking for new roles have much to offer the private sector, including institutional knowledge and emotional maturity. Here are five ways they can position themselves for private sector jobs.
Related: 3 tips for federal workers who are scrambling to find new jobs
Translate the jargon
Many federal employees have robust leadership, policy, operations, and compliance experience, but most need help translating what they do into private sector language, says Carol Kaemmerer, president and principal at Kaemmerer Group LLC, an executive branding and coaching firm in Minneapolis.
Federal employees have valuable skills, but they are often hidden behind their bureaucratic titles and government jargon, Mercedes says. For instance, federal employees with titles like procurement officer, program manager and policy analyst possess valuable skills like critical thinking, risk mitigation and stakeholder navigation.
When writing a resumé, its essential to replace bureaucratic jargon with business-friendly terms. For instance, talk about your experience with strategic operations instead of policy execution, or refer to your cross-functional leadership or instead of inter-agency collaboration, says Caroline Geraghty, a client account manager at 110 North, The Creative Agency in Charlotte, N.C. Business-friendly terms will help hiring managers and recruiter connect the dots between your experience and their hiring needs, she says.
Leverage your unique skill set
Spend some time identifying the types of problems youre highly skilled at solving and then research which private sector company roles seek to solve the same types of problems, says Becca Carnahan, founder of Next Chapter Career, LLC in Boston. For example, if in your federal job, you created processes to improve efficiency then you might want to look at operation manager roles. If you were known for building unexpected partnerships, then perhaps look at business development roles.
Identify and then leverage your unique skill set, Kaemmerer says. As a former federal employee, your superpower might be helping companies to navigate federal regulations and government relations, she says.
Clarify the one thing you do better than 95% of peopleand articulate how that fills a pressing need in the team or project youre targeting, says Sylvana Rochet, an executive and transition coach at Elan Vital. For instance, federal employees often excel at building consensus among stakeholders with conflicting agendas. That mix of diplomacy and influence is highly valued by the private sector, she says.
Focus on outcomes
Rather than listing job duties and tasks on your resumé, emphasize the outcomes you achieved at your federal agency. Private employers dont understand the skill-coding system that is pervasive in the federal workforce, but they do understand outcomes, says Jason Leverant, president and COO of staffing firm AtWork Group. State your key accomplishments in plain language and highlight the impact those achievements had on your organizations success, he says. For instance, instead of saying you updated 70 Standard Operating Procedures, explain how you helped to improve operational efficiency or saved the agency time and money.
Many mid-career federal employees manage multi-million-dollar budgets, lead teams and navigate complex compliance issues. All of these skills are highly transferable when framed properly, says Tristan Layfield, principal career coach at Career Clarity Solutions in Detroit. Talk about the size of your team, the dollar value of your budget and the number of strategic partners you worked with, he says.
Become a better storyteller
In the private sector, storytelling is strategic currency, Mercedes says. Practice telling hiring managers your story by creating narratives around your impact and adaptability, she advises. Private sector hiring managers often assume federal candidates cant keep up in faster-paced environments, when the reality is most government professionals have been doing more with less for years but they havent had to tell that story, according to Mercedes.
Layfield agrees that one of the biggest challenges facing federal workers is combating the perception that they are too siloed or inflexible. Position yourself as an adaptable, data-driven problem solvers with a unique understanding of policy and systems thinking, he says.
Leverage your professional networks
Networking is essential when seeking private-sector jobs. About 70% of jobs are found through social and professional networks, so its important to engage with industry groups, be active on LinkedIn, and attend networking events. Connect with former government colleagues who may have already transitioned into the private sector to ask for guidance and referrals, Geraghty suggests.
With the right guidance and strategic positioning, federal professionals can make powerful transitions, Kaemmerer says.
A new watchdog report uncovers Facebook groups quietly fueling a black market for operational Uber and DoorDash accounts, posing serious safety concerns for riders and customers.
The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a research initiative run by the nonprofit the Campaign for Accountability, found more than 80 black market groups through searches for terms such as uber account for rent. Sporting a combined membership of more than 800,000 users and named things like Uber Delivery Drivers Account For Rent or UBER ACCOUNT FOR RENT WORLDWIDE, these groups make no secret of their intent.
Through these online groups, users can acquire delivery or rideshare accounts without going through the required screening process, allowing those without licenses or insurance to drive for these companies. By bypassing the screening procedure, buyers can also skip the required background checks for drivers.
For women or people who may be vulnerable, if the person making a delivery or picking somebody up via Uber has a criminal history, there is an increased risk to those users, TTP Director Katie Paul says.
Paul says that this concern is only the latest content moderation issue in a broader pattern with Facebook and Meta. Past TTP reports have documented a thriving black market for Facebook business accounts, revealing how the platformwhich has over three billion active users worldwide, according to recent financial filingsis being exploited for scams and potential election interference.
This latest TTP report comes as Meta already faces fresh criticism for scaling back third-party fact-checking in January and shifting more responsibility to users to flag harmful content. That decision coincided with Metas launch of the Community Notes feature, which essentially relies on Facebook users to moderate content and flag posts that violate community guidelines. The move was met with widespread backlash, particularly given that it was announced mere weeks before President Donald Trumps inauguration.
According to Paul, though, the change in moderation guidelines made little difference when it came to scams that are at the center of the latest TTP report.
Paul says this recurring issue is especially prevalent on Facebook, largely because of its Group functionality. The platform relies on community moderators and administrators to police contentbut that system breaks down when the groups themselves are designed to enable scams and fraud.
These have essentially become insulated communities for all kinds of nefarious activity, Paul says. Theyre not just groups where people are trying to keep their plants alive.
In October 2024prior to Metas content moderation policy shiftTTP published a report on a pro-Trump scam ad network, uncovering more than 100 Facebook groups dedicated to selling business manager accounts capable of running multiple pages and ad campaigns.
A similar trend was noted in a 2019 report by Talos, Ciscos cybersecurity research division, which found Facebook groups selling cyber fraud services. Some of these groups had been active for nearly eight years, their reach amplified by Facebooks content algorithm.
A Meta spokesperson says the company is reviewing the report and removing content that violates guidelines. The spokesperson adds that Meta does not allow content that offers to buy, sell, or trade any personal identifiable information.
The TTP report arrives as Meta stands trial for allegedly violating antitrust laws, with the Federal Trade Commission accusing the company of using a buy-or-bury strategy to eliminate competition. The case marks a major push to redefine how antitrust rules apply to tech giants, with the FTC targeting Metas high-profile acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsAppeach now boasting nearly two billion monthly active users.
Meta is facing an FTC trial today about whether the platform has monopolized because its gotten so big, Paul says. If the company is not able to control its product because of its scale, it raises a lot of other questions that policymakers really should be looking into.
Becoming a manager for the first time can feel exciting, gratifying, nerve-wracking, and even overwhelming. But being a good boss is not about following a checklist of what makes a perfect manager, as theres no such thing, argues Sabina Nawaz in her book Youre the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need).
A former HR leader at Microsoft and executive coach for Fortune 500 decision-makers, Nawaz offers actionable frameworks in her book on how to become a better manager, backed by lessons from her clients and personal career wins and losses. Here are some top takeaways from the book on how new managers can best make the transition.
Being a good manager is a journey
Its a common misconception that there are bad bosses and good ones, but according to Nawaz, we all have the capacity to teeter between good and bad boss behaviors.
Just as no person is all good or all bad, the measure of a boss is neither binary nor fixed,” writes Nawaz. “‘Bad’ bosses are rarely bad people. In fact, most of them are good people with the best of intentions who unwittingly cross a tenuous dividing line between good intentions and bad behaviors.
Acknowledging this can help you realize its an active practice to deliver skilled managementand quite common for negative habits to emerge if left unchecked. This mental shift of making continual progress towards productive behaviors and minimizing the emergence of lackluster ones often starts with reframing how you attain success.
Your path to becoming a manager was likely the result of being an ambitious professional delivering beyond expectations, but thats no longer the case. Showcasing your output may be what got you where you are, but now you need to rewire who gets showcased and what ‘output’ means, writes Nawaz. Recalibrating to focus on driving your teams success is the critical distinction between being a standout employee and a standout boss.
Its a continual effort as a manager to reorient how you were incentivized to perform before, and do your best to avoid the slow slip into bad boss behaviors, writes Nawaz.
Communicate with greater precision
Now that youre a manager, the power dynamics have shifted when it comes to how youre perceived by your colleagues. What you say, write, and do can carry more weight. Poor communication is the second most common perceived weakness of managers, according to Nawazs research. One of the most common mistakes is when managers give imprecise feedback or advice, resulting in a lack of clarity on appropriate next steps. This can lead to an overreaction like a colleague redesigning the entire pitch deck, when only one slide needed a revamp. Or too restrained of a response altogether.
When youre a manager, the team often pays close attention to your every word, so Nawaz suggests using what she dubs the scaling tool to offset this pitfall and communicate with the intended level of impact and urgency.
She suggests saying something like: On a scale of one to 10, Id rate the importance of this task at a . . . Or, in terms of a rough sketch vs. polished, this can be a . . . Or, On a scale of one to 10, how confident do you feel about your ability to deliver in the timeline given?
Any professional could benefit from being a more calculated communicator by using the scaling tool, but it matters more when your team puts more weight to your message.
Another common mistake among managers is giving uneven feedback or only offering corrective feedback about whats wrong and needs to be improved upon.
Solely delivering negative feedback is demoralizing and harmful to a team members productivity when theyre not getting motivating insights into what is working. As human beings, we are wired to listen for the dangers, for the negatives, and dont take in the positive until its repeated endlessly like this weeks top song, writes Nawaz.
She recommends managers offset this by offering five positive comments for every piece of corrective feedback, keeping the positive stuff more feedback than praise, and making the delivery of positive feedback a frequent habit. This is important: A Gallup survey found that employees rank the most meaningful and memorable recognition comes from their managers.
Delegate effectively
Now that youre a manager, you cant continue to do everything yourself like you did when you were an individual contributor. You have to delegate. Whats not obvious about delegating is how to do it successfully. You cant simply pass off tasks with a set of instructions and hope for results.
According to Nawaz, delegation starts with identifying your direct reports level of knowledge on a given subject or task. The next step is adjusting your coaching so employees are given the right level of support and independence.
Depending on how much support is needed, you could approach that in a number of ways. For instance, you could do the task and have them observe you, teach them the step-by-step process, ask what they need from you as they complete the task without your instruction, or make it clear youre a resource as they finalize the task on their own.
These actions go in order of providing more coaching from you and less self-sufficiency initially to eventually scaling back your involvement and increasing their own autonomy to complete the task.
Delegation is critical for not only empowering your team to grow and contribute to the organizations goals, but it also provides you with more blank space on your schedule for other tasks.
Recognize your triggers that lead to bad boss behavior
Youll be exposed to different sources of stress and pressure as a manager. Some is avoidable, but a lot of it is not. The buildup of these forces is typically what leads a well-intentioned manager to delegate poorly, communicate haphazardly, or come across as cold.
To do your best to prevent a downward shift toward the bad boss lane, aim to control how you react to these strains by spotting the triggers that set you off.
Nawaz refers to these as your pressure pitfalls, and the ability to identify them as theyre emerging can help you deescalate and change how you react in the moment. She suggests managers ask themselves these types of questions and keep note of the scenarios when these moments bubble up.
What types of people tend to put me on high alert?
What tends to get under my skin the most?
What days of the week or cyclical or seasonal times are particularly pressure-filled for me?
What do I experience physically when I get triggered?
When are the moments I am not at my best? (When youre sleep-deprived? Hungry? In the mornings before youve had your coffee or late afternoons when your energy dips?)
The answers you come up with can help you map your pressure-induced triggers and begin to adjust how you react through following a series of groundig exercises.
Once a trigger is activated, Nawaz recommends doing complex math or thinking through a familiar memory to help direct the brain out of a flight or fight moment and back to executive functioning.
To put this into practiceor any of these suggestionsNawaz advocates for creating a micro habit where you practice the skill daily and keep it small, so theyre tiny enough to sneak past our defense systems and start to inoculate us against change resistance.
By small, she suggests so tiny that this habit takes two minutes or less a day, and may even feel absurdly minuscule on the surface, which means youre off to a strong start.
Keep these management frameworks and recommendations in mind as you begin your journey of working to become a better boss for your team.
The world’s first commercial direct air capture plant opened in Iceland in 2021, with the capacity to remove around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year and turn it into stone deep underground. Four years later, a new DAC plant planned in Louisiana, called Project Cypress, is designed to be 250 times largercapturing 1 million tons of CO2 a year. But supporters are now scrambling to save the project, and up to $550 million in Department of Energy funding on which its future relies.
Under the Biden administration, the DOE planned to create four large new American DAC hubs, with two selected so far. In Louisiana, the project was designed to scale up two different technologies: one from Climeworks, the company behind the first plant in Iceland, and the other from Heirloom, a Silicon Valley startup that operates a plant in Californias Central Valley. Another DAC hub, in Texas, secured up to $500 million in funding from the agency. The government sent the first tranche of $50 million to both last year. Now theres a chance that neither project will happen.
Last month, a leaked DOE memo suggested that the planned DAC hubs in Louisiana and Texas would lose their funding. If that happens, it will be a major challenge for either project to survive. “The whole point of the [DOE funding] is to step in when it’s too risky for the private sector to do so,” says Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, a nonpartisan group of companies, unions, and environmental organizations that advocates for so-called carbon management tech. “Youve got to wonder who’s going to take that risk on.
Stolark sees a very real risk that the U.S. is ceding its leadership in the energy space. She says that it’s a story that’s been played out so many times in tech advancement: The U.S. spends the money on the research and development for a technology, and then we don’t end up manufacturing or deploying the technology. It’s deployed elsewhere.
Climeworks’ ‘Orca’ large-scale plant in Iceland, the world’s first. [Photo: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg/Getty Images]
Experts say DAC technology could be a meaningful part of the fight against climate change, though its still at an early stage of development. It will only ever supplement the main solution: radically curtailing greenhouse emissions across every sector of the economy, from transportation to manufacturing to housing. But the science suggests that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must also remove at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 that weve pumped into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Congress has recognized the potential for DAC technology, and earmarked $3.5 billion in 2021s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to fund the DOEs hubs program, which is administered by the departments Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. The new office launched in order to run the program and support other early-stage climate tech in the private sector.
Yet on his first day in office, Trump halted the payout of funds granted under both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. (He later clarified that the 90-day pause applied only to projects that are part of what the president derisively calls the “Green New Scam.”) He also tasked agencies with reviewing federal grants to assess whether they were “consistent” with his administration’s policy prioritieseven though the government already had signed legally binding contracts to disburse the funds.
The planned locations for Project Cypress’s DAC facilities [Image: Project Cypress]
Compounding the issue, these policy U-turns have put other sources of money at risk. Corporations that had planned to buy carbon removal credits from the DAC plants to help meet their own climate goals, including Microsoft, Amazon, and AT&T, now don’t know when or even if those credits will become available. Investors have to worry that a make-or-break chunk of funding will disappear. Banks financing the projects could get cold feet.
“The uncertainty itself is damaging,” says Noah Deich, cofounder of the nonprofit Carbon180, who served as deputy assistant secretary for carbon management at the Department of Energy under Biden. “Everyone just needs clarity as quickly as possible.”
Climeworks and Heirloom both declined to comment for this story. Batelle, which is overseeing the implementation of the project, didn’t respond to a request for an interview.
A rendering of Heirlooms DAC Hub in Louisiana [Image: Heriloom/Project Cypress]
It’s not yet a foregone conclusion that the projects are dead. After the meo leaked, a coalition of Louisiana business associations sent a letter to their D.C. representatives urging support for policies that boost carbon management. Signees included groups not known for their support of environmentalism or progressive ideals, such as the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association and the Louisiana Chemical Association. (Such support has made DAC tech controversial in some climate circles, since some industries appear to view DAC credits as an excuse to keep polluting. But help from the oil sector could also be the technologys fastest means of scaling up.)
Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois sent another letter to Congress specifically advocating for Project Cypress. “Beyond the direct economic benefitsthousands of jobs and billions of dollars added to the states GDPthe project will have immense downstream impacts,” she wrote. Investing in DAC will generate demand for American-made steel, concrete, and advanced equipment, revitalizing U.S. manufacturing and ensuring that innovation and jobs remain here at home.”
The project is estimated to bring around 2,300 jobs and a total investment of up to $1.7 billion to Louisiana. A report from the Rhodium Group estimates that the DAC industry as a whole has the potential to employ 55,000 people in the state, creating jobs that often appeal to people transitioning out of oil and gas. (In Texas, the planned DAC hub would bring 2,000 jobs, and the industry could attract more than 200,000 jobs.)
Climeworks’ concept rendering for Project Cypress Southwest [Image: Climeworks]
“What we’re seeing is that all of these projects are in really conservative districts,” says Deich. “These are the exact types of industrial and manufacturing jobs that so many of these communities have been asking for and are being delivered.” At the same time, “We’ve already seen this administration say very clearly that they don’t think climate change is a problem. And if you don’t think climate change is a problem, efforts to clean up carbon pollution from the atmosphere are not useful. That’s what’s so concerning to me.”
Following lobbying efforts, a revised version of the memo leaked again. Project Cypress was no longer marked as “terminate,” sources say, but the list noted that DOE wanted more time to evaluate the project. (Funding for the Texas project was still slated for termination.) A final decision might come in the next couple of weeks, when Trump’s 90-day pause on funding disbursements expires. But even if the money survives, the projects will still face challengesincluding the fact that swaths of DOE staff have lost their jobs or accepted buyout offers, and it’s not clear who will be left at the agency to do the work.
Meanwhile, some DAC projects that dont rely on massive federal grants are still moving forward, including a different large facility in Texas that’s slated to open later this year and will capture half a million tons annually. But it’s critical to launch more large projects, says Deich. The industry is aiming for a cost of $100 per ton of CO2 captured. “Everyone knows that you won’t get to that price point until you start building it at scale,” he says. “That creates the type of deployment-led innovations that you’ve seen from solar and windplaces where breakthroughs happened in the lab, initially, but then 90% of the cost reduction happened because the people who manufactured stuff figured out how to do it better.”
If large projects are delayed, that means it will take longer to get down the cost curveand could make it harder to get more investments from the policy side in the future. Deich worries now that if the new hubs aren’t built now, people will think the projects didn’t move forward because the tech doesn’t work. That’s not the case. “It’s the political decisions that [could cause] the projects to fail at this point,” he says. “Not something inherent to the projects.”
