The Thanksgiving travel period is in full swing. Today is the last day before Thanksgiving, which means millions of Americans will be taking to the skies to reach their holiday destinations. And myriad more will also be traveling to airports to pick up their incoming loved ones.
But on one of the busiest travel days of the year, flight delays and cancellations are inevitable. Here are some tools to track delays, along with information on which airports are currently experiencing the worst delays and cancellations.
FAA says this is the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in 15 years
Earlier this week, Fast Company reported on the American Automobile Association (AAA)’s latest data, which revealed that this Thanksgiving travel period will be the busiest in six years.
The AAA defines the 2025 Thanksgiving travel period as running from Tuesday, November 25, to Monday, December 1. During that time, the AAA says 81.83 million Americans will be traveling by road, air, or other means, including 6.07 million by plane.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released its own estimation, which largely concurs with the AAAs data. Last Friday, the FAA announced that this Thanksgiving travel period will be the busiest in 15 years.
The agency says that more than 360,000 flights will take place during the period, shuffling travelers to and from their Thanksgiving destinations. (Its worth noting that the FAAs Thanksgiving period differs slightly from the AAAs period. The FAA says the Thanksgiving period runs from Monday, November 24, to Tuesday, December 2.)
The FAA has also forecast the number of flights in the air for each day over the period, including:
Monday, November 24: 48,173
Tuesday, November 25: 52,185
Wednesday, November 26: 50,130
Thursday, November 27 (Thanksgiving): 25,611
Friday, November 28: 41,560
Saturday, November 29: 46,288
Sunday, November 30: 51,268
Monday, December 1: 49,676
Tuesday, December 2: 47,423
The more flights scheduled, the greater the chance of delays and cancellations.
This map reveals which airports currently have the most delays and cancellations
Delays and cancellations happen for several reasons. According to the FAA, the top five causes of delays in the National Airspace System (NAS) include:
Weather (which causes about 62.6% of all delay minutes)
Volume (13.5%)
Runway (8.3%)
Equipment (1%)
Other/Staffing (14.6%)
In other words, even if it’s sunny and clear skies in the departure or arrival destinations, the sheer volume of scheduled flights, runway availability, equipment issues, and staffing issues can still cause delays.
If you have to make a trip to the airport today for any reason, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on where delays are occurring, as they can not only cause flights to depart later than scheduled but also lead to increased crowds in terminals and parking lots.
FlightAware.com offers an interactive map, aptly named the Misery Map, which shows the current delays at some of Americas busiest airports. As of the time of this writing, the Misery Map shows that between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. today, 63 flights are currently delayed and three have been canceled (keep in mind, this information is updated regularly).
The Misery Map shows that the highest number of delays during that time period is at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), where nine delays are currently listed. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) currently has the next-most delays, at eight. All three presently listed cancellations for the period are from flights at MinneapolisSaint Paul International Airport (MSP).
For the day, FlightAwares expanded data currently shows 549 delays for U.S. flights, as well as 25 cancellations.
If you do need to head to the airport today, whether to catch a flight or pick someone up, the best practice is to track the relevant flights information directly in the airlines app or on its website, and to contact the airline directly if you have any concerns about delays or cancellations.
Its long been the uniform of management consultants and finance bros, but now the humble quarter zip is being embraced by a rather unexpected demographic.
Over the past few weeks, FYPs have become dominated by the workwear staple. Young men who previously mightve been seen exclusively in Nike Tech, have now traded them in for quarter zip sweaters. Across social media, they are sharing styling tips and hosting meetups at malls, all clad in business-casual.
The trend gained widespread attention when, in early November, TikToker @whois.jason shared a video of himself sipping a matcha (the beverage of choice for the performative male) with a friend. Both are wearing quarter zip sweaters.
We dont do Nike Tech, we dont do coffee. Its straight quarter zips and matchas around here, he says in the clip. We upgraded in life; we wear glasses now.
Since it was posted, the clip has gained over 25 million views. No more DMs we on outlook and teams, one comment read. Another wrote: We on linkedin not instagram.
The hashtag #quarterzip currently has over 55,000 posts on TikTok. Theres T-Pain in Louis Vuitton talking about 401k and a quarter zip. Rapper Central Cee hung up his customary Nike Tech fleece for a cream Ralph Lauren one. Nike techs most loyal person just switched up, one comment read on his TikTok post.
The basketball video game NBA 2K account announced the addition of quarter zips to 2K26 last week, not long after the topic started trending on TikTok. Even brands are jumping on, a sure sign as any that a trend has run its course.
Some say the co-option of quarter zips signals a vibe shift that goes beyond fashion. Fortune calls it a subtle signal of ambition and adaptation in a job market that feels almost insurmountably tough for many young adults today. The New York Times described the shift as an aesthetic pivot toward the expectations of the professional world.
Its true, the quarter zip has long been a signal of soft professionalism. If a LinkedIn connection was an item of clothing, it would be the quarter zip (perhaps under a fleece vest to complete the uniform). Others have connected the trend to the history of Black dandyism, a cultural movement and fashion style intended to subvert racial stereotypes, inspiring last years Met Gala theme.
While the lifecyle of a TikTok trend is often no more than a few days or weeks at most, retail data shows a 25% sales rise for quarter zips among 18- to 24-year-olds since mid-2024. Google Trends shows a 2,250% increase in searches for 1/4 zip pullover men’s business casual over the past 12 months.
Has anyone checked in on the finance bros?
In an age of high-turnover trends, ubiquitous screens, and fractured attention spans, a lengthy televised parade organized by a venerable department store sounds like a relic of a bygone era.
But somehow, the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade has in recent years proved itself to be startlingly popular and relevant. In 2024, the parade drew an estimated 31.7 million viewers on NBCs broadcast and Peacock streaman all-time record, and a bigger audience than the Oscars or any entertainment broadcast. This years parade will include, along with balloons featuring legacy characters like Snoopy and Minnie Mouse, a Pop Mart float with an oversized Labubu, a Stranger Things float featuring a Demogorgon, and performances by a singing trio from KPop Demon Hunters and Wicked: For Good star Cynthia Erivo.
Macys is stubbornly unforthcoming on the economics of its parade, and a spokesperson told Fast Company that it was unable to discuss and disclose financials of the event. But it certainly appears to be a bright spot for the retailer, which over the past decade has closed scores of locations and laid off thousands of workers.
Various reports suggest the 2024 version cost an estimated $13 million to produce, with longtime partner NBC paying $20 million for broadcast rights. Macys and NBC announced a new 10-year deal earlier this year, and while terms were not disclosed, The Wall Street Journal reported the new proposal was on the order of $60 million for annual rights to the Thanksgiving parade, a July 4 special, and a new event thats to be determined. This reflects how valuable the parade, in particular, seems to have become for its ability to draw a mass audience, with NBC reportedly selling 30-second ad spots for $900,000.
The Friendsgiving in Pop City float will be featured in the 99th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 27. [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy’s]
A successful, unchanged formula
The parade dates back to 1924 and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1954. While Macys describes it as a gift to the nation, its one that has long since become a business in its own right. According to a report from 2019, a brand sponsoring a new balloon could expect to pay around $200,000 in construction and parade fees. But this, of course, yields a couple of minutes of on-air discussion of the brand or entertainment propertys balloon (or float or performance) from the broadcast hosts.
This is how the parade has worked for decadesand maybe that essentially unchanged formula helps explain its success. By now its an iconic event, deeply embedded in pop culture via numerous appearances in movies and TV shows, and countless memories. Even if you havent watched the parade in years, you know the gist.
So one theory of the events resilient popularity is that it is, like turkey and stuffing, an elevated variation on comfort food. A decade-plus ago, as many mainstream broadcast events began to see their audiences shrink, the parade held steady, in effect growing its influence simply by standing still.
But in the last few years, that audience hasnt just stood still but actually begun to grow, topping earlier viewer records. The Macys spokesperson credits the talented Macys Studio team of artisans and other experts who craft the event, and certainly the proceedings are as lavish as ever.
Among the character balloons set to fly high above Manhattan at this years parade are Mario of Super Mario Bros. fame, and recurring favorite Freida the Dachshund. [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy’s]
A more interesting theory, though, is that a broadcast parade is ideal for a fractional-attention world. Theres something new every few minutes and none of it requires deep concentration. This years event includes 34 balloons, 28 floats, 28 performers, 11 marching bands, and 33 clown crews, meaning the parade is nonstop novelty. It is essentially an analog, marching scroll.
In a kind of virtuous circle, the audience attracts pop culture brands, which attracts a bigger audience. A Macys executive involved in producing the parade told the Freakonomics podcast last year that the goal is to balance legacy characters against new characters, in effect addressing an all-ages audience. Even better: All the content is basically escapist and certainly apolitical, providing an endless stream of excuses to change the subject to something benign when that cranky uncle starts looking for a squabble.
And while Macys may be opaque about the business details that help shape the specific contents of any given years parade, achieving that balance between contemporary relevance and timeless tradition is likely a key to attracting its audience. And sure, the whole thing is essentially an intertwined marketing eventa series of pop culture and brand promotions, under the auspices of Macys own brand. But nobody really seems to mind. Perhaps on the eve of Black Friday this is exactly what many are looking for. A Macys spokesperson calls the parade the official kickoff to the holiday season. That seems to be truer than ever.
What do Marriott, Peloton, and Major League Baseball (MLB) have in common? Each has recently navigated a major crisis in the court of public opinion. Marriotts licensing agreement termination with Sonder left guests stranded and fuming mid-stay. Peloton announced its second product recall in just two years. And the MLB is the latest major sports organization whose players have been swept up in sports betting scandals.
Crisis is everywhere. And while big brands may dominate the headlines, smaller companies face equally urgent situations. Regardless of a companys size, leaders must be prepared when the ever-turning wheel of misfortune lands on their spotbecause it will.
Despite this inevitability, less than half of U.S. companies have a formal crisis plan in place according to a 2023 report by Forbes. I see it in my workshops all the time. Fewer than a fourth of the countless leaders Ive worked with have a dedicated crisis plan or team in place to help them navigate a crisis. Whether they are consciously kicking the can of crisis preparedness down the road or simply dont know where to start, the consequences are the same. Its not if you will ever experience a crisis, its when and how severe. Failing to prepare can shatter reputations, destroy careers, and cripple revenue in a matter of moments. Here are four actionable steps to ensure you arent caught off guard when crisis hits.
1. Create a crisis plan
Planning is the most effective way to manage a crisis, yet many leaders find excuses to put it off. Some believe it will never happen to them; others underestimate the value of crisis planning because it does not generate revenue. In reality, crisis can happen to anyone, at any time, and facing a crisis without a plan is a major revenue drain, especially considering all the emergency expenses needed to manage it. A crisis plan is an essential tool that serves as a roadmap for navigating crisis response: In the same Forbes report, 98% of leaders who had activated their crisis communications plans found them to be effective. A plan doesnt need to be long30 pages is more than sufficientand should include an introduction, lessons learned from past crises, company information, crisis team member information, the companys risk profile, and key questions to ask during crisis to get as many details as possible.
2. Develop a crisis team
The crisis team is a designated group of people from inside and outside an organization that assembles at a moments notice when crisis hits to help gather the facts and take appropriate action. This group of people will help leaders navigate the most sensitive moments of their careers, so its imperative to choose team members who will not only provide sound insight, but will also hold the company and its leaders accountable when necessary. A crisis team should be limited to no more than 12 people and should include representation from the President/CEO, senior VPs, division managers, IT, legal counsel, communications, HR, and finance. Each of these members brings valuable perspective from different departments and may represent different groups of stakeholders. Smaller companies can have as few as three individuals on their teamyou should never try to navigate a crisis alone.
3. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable
As disconcerting as it can be for leaders to address the myriad risks their company faces on a daily basis, envisioning worst-case scenarios and developing a risk profile enables the development of a crisis management strategy before one hits. Worst case scenarios can range from a data breach that compromises proprietary information to an on-the-job employee injury. As there is a virtually unending list of worst-case scenarios, a companys risk profile will depend on the specific organization and industry. In the AI era, theres no reason for leaders not to have a tailored risk profile. Getting started is as easy as typing in your companys details. (Note: AI is not an appropriate tool to draft public-facing statements.) Once the risk profile has been established, you can predraft holding statements for each scenario that will serve as a guide during active crisis and save 20 to 30 minutes of precious time.
4. Learn how to recognize a crisis in your organization
Crises often catch leaders off guard because the buildup that caused them goes unrecognized. Most crises are the result of an unsolved business problem. If the problem can be identified and addressed, its far less likely to snowball into a full-blown crisis. Take the example of Pelotonin 2023, it recalled 2 million bikes after broken seat posts led to multiple reported injuries. The business problem? Poor quality product posing a safety risk to riders. In November 2025, Peloton recalled nearly 900,000 more . . . for the exact same reason. This unresolved business problem created a crisis cycle that eroded consumer trust. Other business problems that commonly lead to crisis include weak security that invites cybercrime, failing to prioritize employee safety resulting in death or injury, or a lack of succession planning that leads to a companys downfall in the event of a CEOs death or departure.
While leaders cant prevent crisis, they can prepare for it. Crisis planning could be the most valuable investment a leader ever makes. Because in business its not if a crisis will ever happen, its whether youll be ready when it does.
At the start of the Introduction to Innovation class at Robert C. Hatch High School in rural Uniontown, Alabama, the face of a teacher fills a wall-size screen at the front of the room. Beaming in from far away like a Zoom call, the teacher is part of a new approach to providing specialized education in underserved communities.
This is the Connected Rural Classroom. It’s a novel rethink of the typical high school classroom, designed specifically to increase access to niche, high-quality education for students in rural schools with limited resources. A remote teacher on a big screen is just one part of the classroom’s unique elements. Designed to emphasize science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and increase students’ technological fluency, the classroom is outfitted with a range of built-in cameras, adjustable lighting, flexible seating, and a slate of hardware for tech-centric programming.
The classroom is supported by the state of Alabama and was created by Ed Farm, a Birmingham-based nonprofit focused on closing the growing digital skills gap in communities across the Southeast. “Especially in Alabama, there’s just a lack of high-quality STEM teachers and math teachers that those students in rural areas have access to,” says Waymond Jackson, president of Ed Farm.
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
A high-tech classroom
In contrast to the typical linoleum-floored room filled with rows of rigid desks, the Connected Rural Classroom looks more like a modern office. There are movable collaboration tables, standing desks, rocking chairs, ottomans, stadium seats along the back wall, and a line of focus booths looking through windows at the trees outside.
The large screen sits at the front of the room on a dark wall that encourages better focus, with a small stage-like area at its foot for presentations by in-class instructors and fellow students. Calming colors and sound-absorptive materials tame the sometimes chaotic effects caused by a roomful of teenagers, and linear cues in the ceiling and floor subconsciously direct their attention to the room’s main instruction area.
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
The room’s lighting is optimized for circadian rhythms, mimicking daylight to augment the single wall of windows in the room. There are also four programmed lighting scenes that can be used during different class scenarios, from stage-lit formal presentations to full-light active collaboration to a subtle dim setting for times requiring quiet focus.
There are multiple cameras that provide the remote instructor with views of all parts of the room, and embedded technology allows the instructor to beam to a specific screen to interact with small groups, or directly onto a student’s tablet for one-on-one instruction.
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
The classroom was designed by the architecture firm Kurani, which has been designing unconventional and often tech-forward classrooms for more than a decade. Founder Danish Kurani says this is part of making the room work not just for students but also for the teachers who may be sitting behind a computer hundreds or thousands of miles away.
“We went to great lengths to essentially try to make it easier for the remote instructor,” he says. “It’s far more difficult when you’re remote, especially when you’re dealing with high school students. Like, how do you have presence in the room? How do you connect with them?”
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
The zoom of classrooms
The classroom design was developed with feedback from students and instructors, and in close collaboration with Ed Farm, which launched in February 2020 with funding from a partnership between the Alabama Power Foundation and Apple. The goal is to expand technology education for students and upskill adults in rural areas. Apple CEO Tim Cook, an Alabama native, was in Birmingham for the program’s 2020 launch. “Ed Farm is about clearing a path for anyoneof any age, background, or interestwhether or not they’re destined for a career in technology,” he said at the time.
From top: The classroom at Robert C. Hatch High School in Uniontown, Alabama, before the redesign; the Connected Rural Classroom today [Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
Ed Farm has made physical spaces a cornerstone of its work, and developed the Connected Rural Classroom design as a prototype for improving the places where technology skill can be acquired. “There was this absolute misalignment between today’s workforce, today’s classroom, and tomorrow’s workforce,” CEO Jackson says, noting that working with Kurani, there was always the goal of creating a classroom design that could work across Ed Farm’s primary geography in the Black Belt of Alabama, but also beyond.
“This is truly a model that can be scaled state by state,” he says.
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
That hope informed the earliest stages of the design process. Kurani says his team started by researching existing public school classrooms across the country to understand their spatial and architectural conditions. They found that the average classroom is between 700 and 900 square feet, tends to have its door close to a corner, and has a single wall of windows on the opposite side of the room.
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
The design the architects developed is a prototype that matches those average conditions. Kurani sees it as a kit of parts that can be slightly adjusted based on the layout of a room or the location of its door and windows. “When it’s time to deploy it in schools, it’s very easy and we can tell all of them, Yes, we can easily bring this to your school. It will fit, Kurani says.
Ed Farm plans to scale the Connected Rural Classroom design to other schools, but also to expand its focus on creating similar educational spaces for people of all ages. “One of the things that we were pushed on by Apple as we came up with our solutions, was to think about the problems and the things that we’re doing that are relevant to Alabama as a microcosm of what actually exists across this country,” Jackson explains. “We see community spaces and unused community assets as an opportunity to bring technology and technology infrastructure closer to those folks that we’re seeking to serve.”
[Photo: Erin Little/courtesy Kurani]
Just know this: Theres going to be a conversation about artificial intelligence at Thanksgiving this year.
An AI superfan is going to gush about chatbots and go on, at length, about how These things just seem to know everything. The dinner tables funnyman will play a highly cringe video they made with the technology. Someone else will either be flummoxed or horrified. A proud guest will declare a vow of abstinencein fact, theyve never even used ChatGPT, they will reveal. One self-important guest will feel very smart when recounting the time they caught an AI making a mistake, once. Theyll tell everyone about it.
These conversations will be bad. There will be camps: the Luddites, the accelerationists, the skeptics, and the 85-year-old ChatGPT power users. There will be the extant Elon evangelists, the people who are very tuned in, and the people who have not been paying attention to any of this. Conversations will touch on both the anticipation and the terror of the tech. The economy. The tech oligarchy. The environment. The bubble. No one will really be talking to each other. Not in any meaningful sense.
Have the conversation anyway. Not because youll form some sort of consensus, but because these long human conversationsat their bestcome with love and also tension. AI provides neither.
Of course, the major hurdle to reaching any sort of common understanding is that AI is too ambiguous a term to serve as a stable jumping-off point for a coherent discourse.
For some, the term references a capital-intensive recipe of hyperscaled data centers and transformer models. For others, AI means the consumer-facing, knowledge-loaded models like Sonnet 4.5 and Grok 3. For others, there are simply the characters of Grok and ChatGPT and Claude.
To many, AI is simply synonymous with the current age, some loose sense that the internet is increasingly automated and agentic. A good number of people simply use AI, increasingly intermingled with social media and the internet, as a shorthand for all technology.
All of these definitions are, in their way, completely accurate, and too divergent for having any meaningful discussion about AI. Proceed, still.
We do not choose our familiesor at least our blood relatives. AI, meanwhile, promises potentially limitless self-selection. Eras past gave us the YouTube rabbit holes and personalized algorithism. Now chatbots promise private universes of confirmation bias, personalization, and sycophancy. Younger generations are growing up with an unprecedented level of intimacy, and confidentiality, with these bots.
Worse, people are forming deeply psychological and romantic relationships with AI tools, plopping their deepest selves into a digital abyssinstead of their loved ones or human professionals. This siloing away of our intimacy leaves us with impossibly difficult-to-predict consequences for our social skills and human relationships.
For this reason, many people who have eschewed AI are protecting themselves, while the rest of us are still looking to define the relationship we want with the technology. The challenge, of course, is that AI companies already know what kind of relationship they want us to have with these chatbots: an all-encompassing one, an endless saccharine dialogue. We dont yet know what lifelong microtargeted conversational partners might do to us, but its probably not wonderful.
This raises the stakes for our human interactions, including imperfect and ever-trying family holidays. AI firms want to woo us with frictionless interfaces for everything. The antidote is sitting across the table from the people we care about, and all the friction they come with, to discuss our interesting times and everything else.
The number of people who have come to me whispering, I want to be seen as a thought leader. And yet when I say, Amazing, lets put you on camera, Im suddenly met with . . . crickets.
I get it. Putting yourself out there can feel awkward. Exposed. Vulnerable. Thats how I feel about dancing in public. Its my own personal nightmare.
At Zumba, Im hiding behind the water cooler. At my wedding, my husband had to mouth the 1-2-3-4 count so I wouldnt lose the beat. And recently at a music festival, the band leader pointed at me to come dance on stage. I prayed he was pointing to the person behind me. Nope.
As I sheepishly walked up the stairs to the stage, I realized something important: no one cares that much. No one thinks Im auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance. Theyre not judging meI was overthinking. So I danced. Honestly, probably not that well. However, once I stopped overthinking, I actually had fun.
Thats the truth about visibility: Once you stop overthinking, you can start owning your voice.
The Real Fear Behind Thought Leadership
When I spoke at this years Fast Company Innovation Festival on this topic, I started with a few simple questions:
Who wants to be more visible? Who wants to be seen as a thought leader? Who wants speaking invitations, press, clients, opportunities?
Almost every hand went up.
Then I asked, Who posted a video of themselves in the past month? Not even a third of the room.
We say we want to be seen, but we hide.
We tell ourselves were too busy, that social media is superficial, or that were not good on camera. Ive trained thousands of people to be on camerafrom my years as a national TV producer to now a public speaking and video coachand everyone can learn the skills of being confident on camera.
So what holds people back? Fear. Fear of looking silly, fear of seeming salesy, fear that someone from high school will see our video and mock us.
But heres the reality: Hiding from the camera is hiding from opportunity.
If youre not showing up, people who should be discovering youclients, collaborators, journalists, recruiters, conference organizerssimply wont find you.
Visibility isnt vanity. Its credibility.
From ‘Accomplished but Anonymous to Seen and Successful
After nearly 20 years producing and directing at Netflix, People, and launching Us Weeklys first-ever digital video unit, I left TV to help professionals grow through video and podcasts.
But I had a problem: My own social media was a hodgepodge of work moments and my young children climbing on top of me. I was what I now call accomplished but anonymous.
I had expertise and credibilitybut only to my circle of media executives and TV producers. I needed visibility outside my circle if I wanted clients to seek me out.
So I started posting to social media, showing up on camera and speaking at seminars. It was awkward at first (not as awkward as dancing on stage!) but I got better each week. Over time, I had new clients, invitations to be a guest on podcasts, and corporate training opportunities. The success has metastasized since then. This year I gave two TEDx talks, I’m a national keynote speaker, and have a thriving business coaching professionals to be seen as experts through video and podcasts. None of that would have happened if I continued to be concerned about “being cringey.”
And thats why I created my SEEN Framework, to help professionals show up authentically without feeling fake or cringey.
The SEEN Framework
Here’s a breakdown of what SEEN stands for.S = Self-Awareness
I grimace when people say I know I should be on camera, but Im not good at it as if theyve failed in life.
Youre an expert in your industry, not a full-time TV host. I have a degree in communication, so dont feel you should know this. And just because you own a phone does not mean you automatically know how to create content. (If owning a microscope made me a scientist, I would have saved a lot of money on tutors.)
Being self-aware means recognizing what you havent learned yet. Be kinder to yourself. Being confident on camera is a skill, not a personality trait.
E = Expertise
In my very first job in TV news, I decided who got on-air as an expert. If I picked someone who wasnt actually an expert? I could get fired. (And I really needed that job.)
To be viewed as an expert, establish both your credibility and your point of view.
Ask yourself: What do I believe about my industry that isnt being said enough? What are people constantly misunderstanding about my work? What problems am I obsessed with solving?
These insights become your content pillars, your speaking topicseven the early chapters of your book. One of my leadership coach clients recently told me, My book is basically already written thanks to our messaging work. Thats the magic of defining what you stand for: It clarifies everything. Forget about building your “personal brand”share your professional perspective.
E = Exposure
When I asked the crowd at the Fast Company Innovation Festival what word influencer brings to mind they said: shallow, and freeloader. Tough crowd.
But when I asked a friend what she thought the word meant, she said: An influencer is a thought leader in their industry.
Forget about semantics.
And dont shy away from messaging people you dont know wellsome of my most meaningful business relationships, like partnerships, collaborations, and clients have started online!
N = Next Level
When I began in TV over 20 years ago, to be visible you needed to be selected by an editor or a TV producer. Instead of feeling that social media is a burden, see it as an opportunity.
Stop waiting for gatekeepersbosses, publishers, networksto choose you. Create your own opportunities. Start a video series. Host a webinar. Pitch yourself to a podcast. Launch the newsletter youve been thinking about since 2017.
One of my clientsa health care consultantfollowed this exact path: We created a video series and podcast, and she doubled down on posting to social media. Within months she had three new clients (including her dream client) and within a year she was invited to moderate conferences nationwide.
When you stop waiting for permission and start creating, doors swing open.
The Mindset Shift: Stop Hiding, Start Shining
Thought leadership doesnt start with followers, it starts with ownership. Own your ideas, your voice, and your visibility.
Create your own stage. When you stop hiding, you start shining.
Thought leadership isnt about being loud or cringey. Its about sharing your point of view, and having the value you bring be seen and recognized.
So stop overthinking and start owning your voice. People want to hear it.
Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee made public more than 20,000 pages of documents from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epsteins estate.
The documents were released as thousands of individual text files, images, and scanned PDFs, a monumental trove most wouldnt have the time or patience to sift through. But what if you could navigate the source documents as easily as you do your inbox?
That was the thinking behind Jmail, a Gmail-style interface for accessible browsing of Epstein’s released emails launched Friday by Kino CEO Luke Igel and software engineer Riley Walz.
Walz, a serial website builder previously dubbed San Franciscos Tech Jester, is also one of the masterminds behind the Panama Playlists, which earlier this year exposed the Spotify listening habits of some famous people, as well as a tool to track San Francisco’s parking cops (the project lasted just four hours).
In an X post announcing the Epstein project, Walz confirmed the pair used Googles Gemini AI to do optical character recognition on the individual emails, making them more readable and searchable than the source documents. The site also includes verification links to government originals.
“You are logged in as Jeffrey Epstein, jeevacation@gmail.com,” the Jmail website reads. These are real emails released by Congress.
Just like a real inbox, the messages are sorted from most recent, dating up to the eve before Epstein’s arrest in 2019. Theres also a working search feature (search Trump, and youll get 1,000 results).
In the sidebar, you can sort by Inbox, Starred, and Sent. Copying Gmails ability to star important messagesexcept this time crowdsourced by the internetthe most-starred email, with 228 stars, is correspondence with Epsteins brother, Mark L. Epstein. It contains the now infamous line: Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?
The lower sidebar section is sorted into Labels, which, in Gmail, separates emails by category. In Jmail, it is a list of people who regularly corresponded with Epstein, including journalist Michael Wolff, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, to name a few.
The House Oversight Committee released the original emails on November 12. Since that release, the president has signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the attorney general to make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice within 30 days.
Africas official maps are stuck in the past, often either outdated, incompleteor both. But governments dont have the budgets to fix them, making it difficult to complete projects as complex as deciding where to put new solar plants to as simple as delivering a package. Now a new plan is underway to map the entire continent using satellite data and AI.
Maybe 90% of African countries dont have access to an accurate current base map for their country, says Sohail Elabd, global director of emerging markets at Esri, the mapping company behind the Map Africa Initiative.
At a United Nations event last year, Elabd met the heads of national mapping departments from around 30 African countries. Nearly all said they didnt have accurate base mapsthe foundational maps that are critical for everything from urban planning to disaster response. Everyone was complaining that theyre struggling, he says. They had no funding.
On the plane ride home, he started thinking about what satellite data could make possible. Traditionally, mapping a country required flying specialized planes with sensors and cameras over the land for a month or more, along with extensive data collection on the ground. “Usually it’s a very costly process and time consuming,” says Elabd.
Now AI can analyze satellite data and create detailed maps at a fraction of the cost. The new project will train AI to recognize features across different terrains, from roads in the desert to homes in the rainforest. Then it will produce base maps that include physical features of the landscape, buildings and roads, and geographic boundaries.
The project will also map additional layers, from agricultural fields to urban infrastructure and vegetation. It’s possible to map not only where farms or trees are located but also to analyze the type of crop and the species of each individual tree. While satellite data and AI are already used in mapping, the continent-wide scale of the project is unprecedented.
The maps can help governments update land registries and plan everything from where to best deploy wind and solar farms to port infrastructure improvements. They can help make navigation systems more accurate. And in parts of Africa where standard addresses don’t existmaking it hard to make deliveries or deploy emergency servicesthe new maps can give governments the details they need to create address systems.
The project will launch early next year, with Space42, a UAE-based space tech company, providing satellite data, and Microsoft supplying cloud infrastructure and the AI framework. Each African country must submit an official request to participate. After the AI is trained, updating the maps will become significantly cheaper, and each country will receive a data management system for annual or biannual updates.
The same approach can help other areas that have gaps in map data, including South America and parts of Asia. Elabd notes, The platform we are building for Africa is designed to be reusable and cost-effective for other regions, and it can produce base maps anywhere in the world.
When its parked in your garage, the Polestar 3 can now help you save on your electric bill.
The automaker is the latest to roll out bidirectional charging for its electric vehicles, making it possible to charge the SUVs battery when power is cheap and then use the vehicle to power your house when prices go up. The company partnered with Dcbel, a startup that makes technology that manages the flow of energy between the car and home.
“Most of our cars sit in driveways more than 80% of the time,” says Dcbel CEO Marc-André Forget. “Now, for the first time, if we think about it, cars start to be useful even when parked. This is transformational. It’s the second-largest investment for most family after the market of the home, and those assets are underused.”
The 2026 Polestar 3 [Photo: Polestar]
When you plug the car into Dcbel’s home energy station, called the Ara, artificial intelligence kicks in and analyzes energy prices, forecasts how much energy you’ll need over the next few days and how much you need for driving, and, if you have solar panels, it also predicts how much solar power you’ll be generating.
The device uses that data to decide, “Should I charge the car right now?” Forget says. “Should I supercharge the car? Should I wait and charge later? Should I use the energy from the car to power the house, to basically avoid buying energy from the grid at a very high price?”
When your house needs power, the equipment converts DC power from your car into AC for the wiring in your home. (The tech can also double as an inverter for solar panels, though if you already have a solar inverter, it likely doesn’t have the right software to work with an EV.)
[Photo: Dcbel]
Any EV could become bidirectional, but automakers need to develop software to make it work. Polestar spent 18 months working with Dcbel to design a seamless user experience. Users can track the system through an app, though it handles everything automatically. If the power goes out in the middle of the night, the car will wake up and start charging your house. If the grid is down over a long period, the car’s battery can charge an average house for 2.5 days, or as long as 10 days if you start rationing power.
The home energy system is pricey, starting at $5,000 for a base model. But in California, Dcbel won a grant that will provide customers with generous rebates: up to $8,100 for a full-featured version of the tech, up to $2,000 for installation, up to $200 for interconnecting to the grid, $1,000 to enroll in a dynamic rate utility program, and up to $2,500 toward a bidirectional EV like the Polestar 3. The rebates are first-come, first-serve, and decline over time. But for the first customers, the charging equipment could be nearly free.
“We chose to focus on California primarily because of the state incentives that are available,” says Peter Wexler, head of product for Polestar in North America. “They made a natural introductory plan for us.” Customers in other states can buy Dcbel’s charging system, but would have to front the full cost.
For utilities, this type of system can help stabilize the grid. Power demand surges at certain timeswhen everyone gets home from work in the evening, or when everyone turns on their AC during a heat wave. If enough EV owners use their batteries to power their house when demand is highest, it can make it possible for utilities to avoid turning to more polluting sources like gas power plants.
California also has some vehicle-to-grid (V2G) pilots that allow EV owners to sell power back to the grid at peak hours and make money, but that isnt yet widely available since the public utility commission still needs to finalize interconnection and compensation rules. Dcbels equipment will enable V2G charging as soon as utilities permit it.
Dcbel has developed and shared a new software standard for bidirectional charging that it hopes automakers will universally adopt; it’s currently working with eight automakers to add other cars to its system. Forget contends that more cars with this capability will likely roll out soon, noting, “I think we’re going to see lots of news about current cars becoming bidirectional over the next couple of months.
