I dont know the last time I flew somewhere to visit a mall.
But Im here in King of Prussia, Pennsylvainaa Philadelphia suburbwalking around a vast shopping complex thats seemingly frozen in the 90s. Despite it being 11 a.m. on a Friday, cars whizz by to fill the endless parking lots, perhaps to peruse the Nordstrom or grab lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.
A few years ago, Id be looking up at a two-story Lord & Taylor. But instead, that big box retailer has been transformed into the next big bet in the experience economy: the inaugural Netflix House.
Netflix has been experimenting with expanding its digital footprint into IRL since 2020welcoming millions of people for live events like Bridgertons Victorian ball. But Netflix House is the company’s first permanent physical location. Its spent the past two years working with the global architecture firm Gensler and a handful of other companies to imagine what Netflix could be as a venue. I was invited as one of a handful of journalists to peek inside before it opens to the public this week.
As I walk through the front doora door cheekily framed by a classic red Netflix DVD mailera large atrium welcomes me. Im ushered forward by a long, painted red carpet that leads straight up the stairs in an entrance that ironically feels more Hollywood than Hollywood.
On the walls, youll see every Netflix thing you knowa 10-foot Thing hand from Wednesday, a spooky mansion from Stranger Things, an upside down, floating chess set from Queens Gambit.
But what is Netflix House?
My tl;dr version is that it feels like a cineplex for the modern era, but theres only one theater insideand that theater is actually free to attend. Instead, most of the 100,000+ square-foot footprint has been dedicated to amalgamating a millennial fever dream: a space thats part arcade, part store, part mini golf, part restaurant, andmostlya love letter to experimental, immersive theater.
However, after two hours of working my way through Netflix Houses spaces and attractions, I realized that Netflix isnt trying to reinvent the “outdated” movie theater for the streaming age.
Instead, Netflix wants to take over experiential retail the same way it took over video streaming.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
Why build Netflix House
Say what you will about the streaming wars, but Netflix is still the juggernaut of the global market of its own creation. Its 301.6 million global subscribers approach the population of the United States (the last figure Netflix reported before it stopped sharing subscriber numbers at the end of 2024). When the companys subscriptions began to plateau in 2022, the company finally dropped the ace up its sleeve, and cracked down on subscription sharing. Despite complaints, they added 70 million subscribers since.
Its a testament to the power of the Netflix brand, and its IP. But despite the fact that Netflix owns cultural mindshare (how many Rumi costumes did you see on Halloween), Netflix continues to draw 95% of its revenue from subscriptions. It lacks a truly diversified business model.
Over multiple interviews, Netflix shied away from outlining its own plans for how Netflix Houses might drive the companys bottom line. The company has committed to building three locations through 2027, and assures me that Netflix House is an idea that it intends to scale. I would love to see this in every major city, says Marian Lee, CMO of Netflix.
It would be silly for Netflix to not try. The global entertainment market (including broadcast and events) is a $3 trillion business globally according to PwC. Live experiences, ranging from concerts to podcast recordings to installations like 29 Rooms, are a growing phenomenon within that. The U.S. experiences market has been growing 21% a year since 2019, according to the research firm Habo.
In-person, experiential entertainment has been a big business for decades. Disneys theme parks represent 37% of its $90 billion in revenue, while Universal Studios and Super Nintendo World drive about 20% of NBCUniversals $39 billion business. (Its why the companies recently announced theme park investments of $60 billion and $7 billion, respectively.)
These figures dwarf Netflixs $3 billion marketing budget from which Netflix Houses seem to have been developed thus far. However, Netflixs approach isnt to build a single global destination that will require families take out a second mortgage to visit; its to craft a duplicatable model. To build a sort of Netflixland inside large scale, oft-abandoned big box retail spaces that dot the U.S.and perhaps nostalgic American malls in particular. It’s designed to be a cross between the classic cineplex and experimental theater, with enough new things to check out to keep up with Netflixs relentless release cadence.
We want it to be a place that’s not just like a special occasion destination, says Lee. We want you to come back over and over again.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
Modular by design
Interactive experiences are the big attractions at Netflix House. The company has been honing this idea for a while, having launched 40 experiences for brands like Stranger Things and Bridgerton globally. Theyve entertained 10 million people to date, at 450 openings in 300 cities around the worldlearning whats worked and what hasnt.
Every time we do it, it’s like, Oh, that game’s not working as intended. Let’s change that, says Lee. And so we are sitting on a mountain of information that allows us to put something into a permanent space, but we are still able to be flexible.
Indeed, Netflix House is built to reshape itself to embrace its latest viral hit. Even its stunning atrium is decorated in swappable set pieces, some of which were updated in the last minute before opening.
[Photo: courtesy of the author]
The level of detail in the designI really pushed this team to the brink, says Lee, who notes that as K-Pop Demon Hunters was a surprise hit, Netflix needed to figure out how to get the IP integrated at the eleventh houradding the cat Derpy onto a mural outside, and commissioning a big sculpture that will sit outside the space. They hustled and got it done. But we know that for fans who are walking through the mall and see Netflix, they know that that’s really [our] number one film in 2025. And so if we didn’t deliver for them, that wouldn’t be great.
As Aaron Birney, Genslers principal of retail and consumer experience, explains, Netflix usually spun up events ad hoc in unique locations. That meant Netflix commandeered big box stores locally, like a closed Best Buy, and transformed them into a proper theater.
Similarly, Netflix House is architected to be a barebones frame that recedes behind the content. But its been designed with the acoustics, expansive rooms, and technical framework to enable anything Netflix might want to build inside.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
Trying Netflixs experiences
At Netflix House, two 15,000 square foot sound stages represent a third of the overall footprint, each of which has been transformed into a different IP wonderland offering a different flavor of experiencecomplete with live actors who improv, and will even pull you aside, to round out the immersion. To book these experiences, you can simply scan a QR code and choose your time slot of choice.
[Video: courtesy of the author]
The One Piece experience, for instance, begins with a member of the Navy locking your group up into a pirate prison cell. And what follows is a long series of escape roomseach with a different puzzle or game. (I found myself running my hands over walls to push symbols at the same time, or turning cranks and switchesone challenge even forces your crew to band together their arms to stretch an electric current from one wall to the other). To manage capacity, two concurrent escape room tracks run at the same time, and doors open on a timer even if you suck. Its a linear experience with one clear story.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
Wednesdays exhibit is more freeform for you to explore as you like. It kicks off with a truly jaw dropping reveal as you step right into her bedrooma transportive, picture perfect recreation of the show. Her bubbly roommate, Enit, appears with her in silhouette behind the large window to kick off the story. It opens to reveal a maudlin carnival (complete with a laser crossbow shooting range and spinning wheel that will reveal how you will die).
Instead of escaping, youre there to play. But you can also follow along with a mystery on your phonewhich will draw you deeper into Wednesdays built world, from the carnival, through a forest, into more striking Wednesday sets like the headmasters office where you can hunt for clues.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
Netflix is coordinating with show runners so that the mini stories in these experiences feel like they are actually part of the world. And in some cases, the company is installing actual props from these showsas with the lockers installed in a Stranger Things experience coming to the Dallas Netflix House when it opens later this month.
That installation gives everyone a large, dark space to explore with a specially programmed flashlight (that, yes, will go out at the worst of times). Dallas will also host real life Squid Games, which Netflix toured with, for fans to compete to win (death punishments not included).
Each of these experiences are ticketed separately, starting at $39/head, and theyll actually be moved between Netflix Houses for regional variety. The company is insisting, however, that it doesnt want to take a rinse and repeat approach. Netflix says it wont simply reskin the existing spaces with different IP. Instead, the company is partnering with local artists and several technical experts so that each installation features a different experiential mechanism at its core.
Truth be told, its the sets that I found so appealing. To actually step inside a show is a powerful sensation. Its more than just an Instagram opp (of which, yes, the House has many). Youre actually living a piece of entertainment IRL.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
A theater that doesnt charge
Perhaps the biggest twist inside Netflix House is its movie theater, which doesnt charge for tickets. Instead, its a free programming space, where Netflix imagines people meeting up for Monday Night RAW viewing parties, or where actors might tour to promote a show.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
Its a coy bit of marketing, sure. (And you wont forget its Netflix. Even the walls inside the theater are lined with red, glowing columns that mirror the Netflix slate preceding each show.)
But perhaps Netflix also knows that its another way to get people into the House. Some attractions are sponsored (which shouldn’t be a surprise)I noted Mastercard logo adorning the wall near a Bridgerton photo oppand theres plenty of other stuff to spend money on when the show is over, too.
Because a considerable amount of the footprint goes to a retail store and a restaurant.
Not that its a competition, per se, but the store outperforms some retail Ive seen at Disney World and Universal. I particularly enjoyed a sculpture where One Pieces own Luffy spirals his rubber arm out of a barrel of tangerines to grab his hat. Its hard to resist the endless array of merch, which includes regionalized “NetPHLix” sweatshirts and totes. Who wouldn’t want to binge Love is Blind while chugging Josh out of its official steel wine glasses?
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
The restaurant called Netflix Bites, meanwhile, juggles a vibe between high touch entertainment and mall food court. Greg Lombardo, VP and head of live experiences at Netflix, says hes after an elevated diner concept. The menu is amusing. It offers fan service items like Red Bite, Green Bite chicken referencing Squid Game, and a 2lb pretzel that celebrates how every Netflix story has a big twist.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
But its the custom neon signs and lovingly created sculptures (the Emily in Paris croissant dress is more exquisite than it has any excuse to be) that make you remember that youre sitting inside a Netflix restaurant. These sculptures were designed by Netflixs own experiences team, and fabricated by F&D.
Regarding the menu, I cant help but wonder if they could push the idea of limited time specials further. I want to try a devil fruit of the month, or eat the exact olde English dish from the Bridgerton season finale. I desire more literality here across the board: I want to touch and taste the things that I see on the screen, not just have dishes inspired by Netflix shows. When Lombardo suggests we might see prix fix meals from Chefs Table restaurateurs, I realize thats just what I crave more of. Feed me the feed!
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
At night, a centrally positioned bar is sure to spill over into the attached Top Nine mini golf course, where the goal is to get a high score rather than low. Each hole represents a different show, and RFID balls mean your strokes are tracked automatically. A WWE hole urges you to bounce the ball off the ropes. An Is it Cake hole shows you a clip and makes you properly guess, is it cake? to get the highest score route opened. A One Piece hole actually places two putters against one other, head-to-head, each putting as fast as they can to fire cannonballs in a Skeeball-style arrangement to sink the other ship first.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
When I mentioned to Lombardo that I had my reservations about minigolf (seriously, minigolf?!?) at Netflix House, he counters that its actually been amongst the most successful pre-booked experiences. Indeed, even the actors being filmed for a promo do seem like theyve having fun between takes. It only costs $15 to play a game, while the largescale experiences run $40 a head (or $160 for a family of four). These prices are within market rate for sure, but its notable that Netflix House has so many tiers of pricing for a visit: Free, $15, or rates that edge into day-at-a-theme-park territory when you mix live experiences with the price of dinner.
Finally, Netflix House features a roomscale VR setup created alongside Sandbox VR. Its the one thing I didnt really try, and the one bit of architecture that verged more toward looser scifi framing than Netflix IP (if you didnt put the VR helmet on that is). Inside the VR world, youll be shooting the Demogorgon from Stranger Things.
[Photo: Kat Kendon/2025 Netflix Attractions, LLC]
The future of Netflix House
I have little doubt that Netflix Houses opening in Philadelphia and Dallas this year, and Vegas (2027), will do well in the short term. Research shows that people will travel for live experiencesa recent report found nearly 50% of people would travel up to two hours for an immersive experience, and another quarter would travel up to three.
Netflix is one of the most impactful entertainment companies of the modern era. And it doesn’t just have the Netflix brand to stand upon. Its power comes from leveraging its ongoing cadence of viral IP into big box entertainment thats designed to support the next big thing rapidly and fluidly.
Yet theres no doubt that Netflix is dipping its toe into the water before completely jumping in. Lombardo tells me he feels pretty confident about the overall structure theyve built, and their balance of entertainment options. But they do intend to keep learning and honing. When we spoke just days before the opening, he said his biggest unknown was actually around customer service. He wanted to ensure that, even in a space where you book tickets via QR code, every touchpoint with a Netflix House employee brought a fan deeper into the brand.
I think its reassuring that Netflix, a company known for digitization and scale, is focused on the human componentright down to the actors its hiring and training for its live experiences. I think about the ill fated end of Disney Questa 2000s-era attempt by Disney to reimagine the future of entertainment with arcade gaming but no live theateras something Netflix must have learned from when modeling its own thesis. I found myself framng Netflix House as an AMC for the streaming age, or maybe Planet Hollywood with less crappy food and more actual stuff to do. Maybe even a third space for bored teens, minus the matcha.
Ultimately, the market will decide if Netflix House is a worthy idea or not. But I left the space feeling positively nostalgic, remembering the weekends I used to spend staring at a big screen in the dark with my feet sticking to the floor, or recalling the liminal interactions I had with actors in immersive theater shows like Sleep No More.
Netflix is embracing some of the most exciting trends in theater while mixing in some of the most popular IP of the era, all within a middle American friendly wrapper of a classic cineplex.
If Netflix is a master of anything, its creating a spectacleand making it as easy to experience as possible.
Wall Street pointed toward strong gains before markets opened Monday as a bipartisan deal to end the federal government shutdown gained traction in the Senate, though it lacked any clear resolution to expiring health care subsidies that Democrats have been fighting for.Rising hopes for an end to the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history pushed futures for the S&P 500 0.9% higher, while Dow Jones futures gained 0.4%. Nasdaq futures climbed 1.5% on the strength of the technology sector.Health insurers were among the losers early Monday as lack of clarity on health care subsidies clouded their futures.Sunday’s test vote began a series of procedural maneuvers to move toward passing compromise legislation to fund the federal government, though final passage could be several days away. The Senate may hold a vote by mid-December on extending expiring health care tax credits, the key sticking point.President Donald Trump suggested in a social media post over the weekend with few details that the subsidies being sent to the “money sucking” insurance companies should instead be sent directly to people so they can buy their own health insurance.Cigna, UnitedHealth Group and Humana all fell between 1% and 2% in premarket, while some smaller health care companies saw drops of up to 9%.Monday’s gains were led by a rebound in technology shares as investors’ alarm over the run-up in stock prices related to the craze for artificial intelligence appeared to calm.U.S. chipmaker Micron jumped more than 5% before the opening bell, while Seagate Technology and Super Micro Computer each rose about 4.5%.Wall Street remains focused on the latest quarterly reports and forecasts from U.S. companies.More than 90% of companies within the S&P 500 have reported earnings for their latest quarter. Most companies have reported growth beyond Wall Street expectations and the influential tech sector has the strongest growth, according to data from FactSet.Corporate profits and forecasts were already being scrutinized by Wall Street as investors try to gauge whether the market’s overall high value is justified. The results have taken on more significance amid a lack of other data about the economy because of the U.S. government shutdown, which is now the longest on record.The shutdown is responsible for delays in key economic data on inflation and employment that traders and the Federal Reserve rely on in making decisions about investments and policy. The lack of data on employment is especially troubling because the job market has been weakening.The Fed has signaled a more cautious approach on interest rate cuts that Wall Street has been expecting to help stimulate the economy by reducing the cost of borrowing.The Fed has already cut its benchmark rate twice this year as it tries to counter the impact that a weakening employment market could have on economic growth. However, cutting rates could worsen inflation at a time when levels are stubbornly higher than the central bank’s 2% target.Wall Street is still mostly betting that the Fed will cut interest rates at its December meeting.Elsewhere, in Europe at midday Germany’s DAX gained 1.7% and the CAC 40 in Paris jumped 1.3%. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1%.South Korea’s Kospi added 3% to 4,073.24. Computer chipmaker SK Hynix, which is cooperating with Nvidia on artificial intelligence, surged 4.5%. Its bigger rival, Samsung Electronics, was up 2.8%.Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 1.3% to 50,911.76, lifted by big gains for AI related shares such as chipmaker Tokyo Electron, which surged 4.3%.The Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 1.6% to 26,649.06 and the Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.5% to 4,018.60.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 picked up 0.8% to 8,835.90.Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 0.8%, while the Sensex in India gained 0.3%.
Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott, AP Business Writers
The Senate took the first step to end the government shutdown on Sunday after a group of moderate Democrats agreed to proceed without a guaranteed extension of health care subsidies, angering many in their caucus who say Americans want them to continue the fight.In a test vote that is the first in a series of required procedural maneuvers, the Senate voted 60-40 to move toward passing compromise legislation to fund the government and hold a later vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire Jan. 1. Final passage could be several days away if Democrats object and delay the process.The agreement does not guarantee the health care subsidies will be extended, as Democrats have demanded for almost six weeks. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York voted against moving ahead with the package, along with all but eight of his Democratic colleagues.A group of three former governors New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan and Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine broke the six-week stalemate on Sunday when they agreed to vote to advance three bipartisan annual spending bills and extend the rest of government funding until late January in exchange for a mid-December vote on extending the health care tax credits.The agreement also includes a reversal of the mass firings of federal workers by the Trump administration since the shutdown began on Oct. 1 and would ensure that federal workers receive back pay.Senate Majority Leader John Thune quickly endorsed the deal and called an immediate vote to begin the process of approving it as the shutdown continued to disrupt flights nationwide, threaten food assistance for millions of Americans and leave federal workers without pay.“The time to act is now,” Thune said.Returning to the White House on Sunday evening after attending a football game, President Donald Trump did not say whether he endorsed the deal. But he said, “It looks like we’re getting close to the shutdown ending.”
Five Democrats switch votes
In addition to Shaheen, King and Hassan, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, home to tens of thousands of federal workers, also voted in favor of moving forward on the agreement. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman and Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen also voted yes.The moderates had expected a larger number of Democrats to vote with them as 10-12 Democratic senators had been part of the negotiations. But in the end, only five Democrats switched their votes the exact number that Republicans needed. King, Cortez Masto and Fetterman had already been voting to open the government since Oct. 1.The vote was temporarily delayed on Sunday evening as three conservatives who often criticize spending bills, Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, withheld their votes and huddled with Thune at the back of the chamber. They eventually voted yes after speaking to Trump, Lee said.Another Republican, Sen John Cornyn of Texas, had to fly back from Texas to deliver the crucial 60th vote.
Schumer votes no
After Democrats met for over two hours to discuss the proposal, Schumer said he could not “in good faith” support it.Schumer, who received blowback from his party in March when he voted to keep the government open, said that Democrats have now “sounded the alarm” on health care.“We will not give up the fight,” he said.Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, said giving up the fight was a “horrific mistake.”Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., agreed, saying that in last week’s elections people voted overwhelmingly Democratic “to urge Democrats to hold firm.”
A bipartisan agreement
Democrats had voted 14 times not to reopen the government as they demanded the extension of tax credits that make coverage more affordable under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans said they would not negotiate on health care, but GOP leaders have been quietly working with the group of moderates as the contours of an agreement began to emerge.The agreement includes bipartisan bills worked out by the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund parts of government food aid, veterans programs and the legislative branch, among other things. All other funding would be extended until the end of January, giving lawmakers more than two months to finish additional spending bills.The deal would reinstate federal workers who had received reduction in force, or layoff, notices and reimburse states that spent their own funds to keep federal programs running during the shutdown. It would also protect against future reductions in force through January and guarantee federal workers would be paid once the shutdown is over.
House Democrats push back
House Democrats swiftly criticized the Senate.Texas Rep. Greg Casar, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said a deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a “betrayal” of millions of Americans who are counting on Democrats to fight.“Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise it’s capitulation,” Casar said in a post on X. “Millions of families would pay the price.”Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota posted that “if people believe this is a ‘deal,’ I have a bridge to sell you.”House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans and said Democrats will continue to fight.“Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country and the American people know it,” Jeffries said.
Health care debate ahead
It’s unclear whether the two parties would be able to find any common ground on the health care subsidies before a promised December vote in the Senate. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said he will not commit to bring it up in his chamber.Some Republicans have said they are open to extending the COVID-19-era tax credits as premiums could skyrocket for millions of people, but they also want new limits on who can receive the subsidies and argue that the tax dollars for the plans should be routed through individuals.Other Republicans, including Trump, have used the debate to renew their yearslong criticism of the law and called for it to be scrapped or overhauled.
Shutdown effects worsen
Meanwhile, the consequences of the shutdown have been compounding. U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights on Sunday for the first time since the shutdown began, and there were more than 7,000 flight delays, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks air travel disruptions.Treasury Secretary Sean Duffy said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that air travel ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday will be “reduced to a trickle” if the government doesn’t repen.At the same time, food aid was delayed for tens of millions of people as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were caught up in legal battles related to the shutdown.And in Washington, home to tens of thousands of federal workers who have gone unpaid, the Capital Area Food Bank said it is providing 8 million more meals ahead of the holidays than it had prepared for this budget year a nearly 20% increase.
Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro, Associated Press
This weekend, U.S. travelers began to feel the initial impact of flight reductions mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a plan designed to help compensate for the understaffing of air traffic controllers due to the ongoing government shutdown.
On Sunday, more than 13,000 U.S. flights were canceled or delayed, and things are only going to get worse this week as the total percentage of flights reduced each day is mandated to reach 10% of all U.S. air traffic by Friday.
But the pain might not end there.
Now, the U.S. transportation secretary has warned that air traffic could slow to a trickle ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
Last week, the FAA issued an order mandating that airlines begin reducing the number of flights they operate each day. The reason for this order is to lessen the burden on airports and their air traffic controllers, all of whom have not been paid in over a month due to the ongoing government shutdown.
This lack of payment has led to air traffic controller staffing shortages, as many controllers have taken on other jobs to help pay the bills while their checks are on pause. Fewer air traffic controllers increase the safety risk in the skies. One way to help mitigate that risk is to reduce flights.
And that is exactly what the FAA announced last week.
On Friday, the first phase of those reductions went into effect, with airlines ordered to reduce flights by 4% over the weekend. That percentage will grow in steps throughout the week to 10% by this Friday. But even the 4% reduction has already led to significant disruptions this weekend.
According to data from flight-tracking service FlightAware, on Sunday, there were a total of 10,477 flight delays into, out of, or within the United States. Additionally, another 2,952 US flights were canceled, with the FAAs mandated reductions likely contributing significantly to that number.
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Tomorrow, FAA-mandated flight reductions will increase to 6%, rising to 8% on Thursday, and 10% on Friday.
However, it might not end there if the government shutdown drags on. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently told Fox News that reductions could reach 20%, without giving a timeline for that number.
Thanksgiving travel warning
But the bad news surrounding U.S. air traffic doesnt end there. As noted by CNBC, on Sunday, Duffy told CNNs State of the Union that air travel in America is only going to get worse ahead of the Thanksgiving holidays.
Thanksgiving is on Thursday, November 27, this yeara little more than two weeks away. Many people begin traveling for their Thanksgiving holidays earlier in the week. It is one of the busiest travel weeks in America.
The two weeks before Thanksgiving, youre going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle, Duffy said, adding that many Americans are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesnt open back up.
The thing Duffy is referring to is the federal government.
The government has been shuttered since October 1 in what is now the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, in a fight primarily over the funding of healthcare subsidies for millions of Americans.
The Trump administration and Republicans dont want those needed subsidies renewed, while Democrats support renewing them so cash-strapped Americans can continue to pay for their healthcare.
Hope on the horizon?
Duffy has previously claimed that the FAA-mandated flight reductions isnt about politics but safety.
Yet reducing the number of flights in America could serve to add pressure on Congress to reach a deal to reopen the government, as public anger and frustration over air traffic disruptions mount.
Still, there is no doubt that the fastest resolution to Americas air traffic rut is by reopening the federal government and getting paychecks back to air traffic controllers. And thats why there may be hope on the horizon.
Last night, the Senate advanced a bipartisan deal that would see the U.S. government reopened. But the deal, which does not protect Americans access to healthcare subsidies, still needs to be passed by the House and then signed by President Trump. Theres no guarantee either one of those things will happen, however.
Even if an agreement on the new bill could be reached relatively quickly and signed into law, a return to normal air traffic over U.S. skies could still take weeks, causing headaches during the Thanksgiving travel period ahead.
Brands matter now more than ever.
You dont have to say it, I know what youre thinking: the CEO of a brand agency arguing for brands? How surprising.
But this isnt for me. This is for every CMO looking to secure their seat at the table and fighting to keep brand investment alive.
This is for every CEO and CFO balancing the pull of GenAI and the flood of new tools that promise optimization, automation, personalization, and agentic transformation.
And yes, dare I say it, this is for my competitors, who I know are on their own crusade to prove that brand still matters.
Because brands are quietly under attack, through budget cuts, short-termism, and the belief that anything truly valuable can be automated. Were confusing lead generation with brand creation and, even more dangerously, forgetting how important a brand is to business growth.
WHY BRANDS MATTER
In the process, were forgetting what brands actually do and why they still matter. Because when everything is automated, brand is what remains human. When products and services are copied, a brand is what creates desire, and an unfair advantage. And when disruption is constant and competition global, only strong brands will endure.
I may lead a creative company but Im also a CEO with a growth mandate, investing in our own brand. And I believe, now more than ever, that brand is a strategic asset and one too many businesses underinvest in at their peril.
So, lets confront four counterarguments, the real ones I hear every day in rooms where growth is on the line.
1. Performance marketing delivers sales. Brand is just a cost center.
Performance marketing works. It gets clicks, drives conversions, and shows up beautifully on a dashboard. But, if performance is the engine, brand is the fuel that drives it, as the prior CEO of Nike found out a little too late, after a focus on performance and efficiency over brand led to stalled growth and declining sales.
Performance doesnt create preference or build loyalty. Without brand, performance marketing becomes a tax you pay repeatedly to stay in the game. Brand, by contrast, is a multiplier. It builds memory, emotional affinity, and cultural relevancethe very elements that make performance more efficient over time. Strong brands can command higher prices, attract better talent, and weather competitive pressure. Its why Mastercard keeps innovating on its Priceless brand platform. How Xbox has become more than a console, its become a community. And its why LOréal Pariss Because Im Worth It still drives double-digit growth.
Brands like these are powerful business engines delivering three times the brand value and nearly four times the year-on-year growth of their competitors, according to a McCann analysis of 15 brands across 12 countries and 6,000 consumers. They create the conditions for performance marketing to perform better.
2. Brand cant be measured.
This is the argument I hear most often, and it is the one that stings the most, because there is some truth in it. We have failed to connect the emotional power of brand with the hard metrics that matter to long- and short-term business success. We have defaulted to soft metrics like awareness and recall, when what clients and boards are asking for is clear and fair: Show me how my investment in brand creates growth. Show me how it moves people and moves markets.
That is a leadership challenge for everyone responsible for a brand. And I include McCann in that.
But the belief that brand cannot be measured is simply wrong. Strong brands command higher prices, drive loyalty, and outperform competitors, with up to two times market cap and four times employee engagement, based on McCanns analyses of more than 130 brands across multiple markets and categories. Brand is structural and, when measured with the right intent, it becomes the most powerful signal of long-term business health.
Again, this is about completing the picture, not replacing performance metrics. Because brand powers performance.
3. Everything can be copied, so whats the point of brand?
Dupes may seem like a threat to a brand, but theyre not. Its actually a sign of how culturally powerful brands have become. People buy the dupe because they know the original. Theyre not rejecting the brand or buying a brandless product, theyre acknowledging the brand by seeking out something that looks awfully close to it. Strong brands know how to stay in the story. When knockoff Lafufu versions of Pop Marts Labubu toy went viral, the brand didnt retreat. It trademarked the parody name and turned it into a moment.
In a world where everything can be copied, the only asset that can’t is the emotional signal people choose to align with. Thats your brand.
4. Discovery is data-driven now. Brand doesnt matter if youre not in the feed.
There is no question that discovery looks different now. People are not searching the way they used to and content is now served by an algorithm. What shows up is no longer just about keywords or intent but about LLMs and algorithms predicting relevance, proximity, and engagement. For consumers, especially Gen Z, the feed is culture and connection, not just content. And if youre not appearing there, you risk being invisible.
But that is exactly why brand matters more than ever. While data may determine what gets delivered, it is brand that determines what gets noticed. Algorithms reward attention signals like clicks, shares, comments, and saves. Brands that understand human truths (yes, humans) can generate those signals for a business. It is what makes people stop scrolling, pay attention, and feel something. Without it, content becomes wallpaper, optimized but forgettable wallpaper.
According to McCanns own Truth Central research, 64% of people worry they will discover fewer new things if companies only show them what the algorithm thinks they want. That is an open invitation for brands with a point of view and the courage to break the pattern.
So yes, Im the CEO of a brand company making the case for brand. Because in a world of endless change, a brand is what gets you emotional advantage and moves the people and markets that matter most to your business.
Daryl Lee is global CEO of McCann Worldgroup.
If youve seen a birds-eye view of Earth over the past decade, chances are it came from Colorado-based Maxar Intelligence. From some 280 miles up, its powerful imaging satellites have created an atlas of modern problems: the impacts of extreme weather, the build-up of Russian tanks near the Ukrainian border, the ruination of Khartoum and the decimation of Gaza, even the not-so-total destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities by U.S. bombers.
What you may not have noticed: Last month, the Maxar brand was itself wiped out, after its private equity owner replaced it with a new moniker: Vantor.
The new name reflects how the company that sees everything on Earth now sees itself. Peter Wilczynski, Vantors chief product officer, points to the harsh V, which gives it that edge. The edginess extends to a slick new website, where fast-paced scenes on screens evoke Jason Bourne, or Alex Karp. But unlike Palantir, where Wilczynski spent a decade, or Anduril, a Vantor partner, the new name does not come from The Lord of the Rings, the touchstone for so many unabashed defense tech firms. Still, Wilczynski admits: it could be Elvish.
The Maxar makeover reflects a broader crossroads for Earth observation, says Jarkko Antila, the CEO of Kuva Space, a Finnish startup building a constellation of AI-equipped hyperspectral nanosatellites, capable of monitoring any material on the Earths surface. Raw satellite imagery alone is less of a differentiator. Combining imagery with AI-powered analytics and sensor fusion to access real-time actionable intelligence is what customers demand.
The hard-edged, tech-forward revamp isnt just marketing. Maxars transformation reflects bigger shifts in the business of watching Earth. A new wave of military and intelligence demand has led companies to double down on government work or even enter the market for the first time. According to Novaspace, a consultancy, the data and services market for defense and intel customers grew by 42% over the past five years, reaching $2.2 billion in 2024. National security work now represents more than 65% of the whole earth observation data market.
Whereas imagery satellite companies once leaned into civic applications, the firms are increasingly turning to AI to rapidly analyze all kinds of space data, and sharpening their focus on national security amid turmoil here on Earth. Were experiencing growth across every region as customers respond to the changing geopolitical climate, Wilczynski says. Vantors international business has grown by double digits this year to around 100 government and corporate customers, with the bulk of its contracts now with military and intelligence agencies, he adds.
Vantor’s new platform includes a tool for automated tasking of multiple satellite constellations [Image: 2025 Vantor]
A separate Maxar division that builds the satellites, the California-based Maxar Space Systems, was also rebranded, as Lanteris. At the top of its new roadmap, the company said it was centered on platforms for missile tracking, secure communications, and resilient constellations that safeguard U.S. and allied interests. Last week, the lunar infrastructure firm Intuitive Machines bought Lanteris for $800 million, “mark[ing] the moment Intuitive Machines transitions from a lunar company to a multi-domain space prime, CEO Steve Altemus said in the companys press release.Investors who previously shied away from national security are now pouring in record amounts of cash. According to Bain & Company, venture capital investment in defense tech has increased more than eighteen-fold over the past decade. Over the next decade, Goldman Sachs estimates, the global satellite market will grow from $15 billion to $108 billion. DoD is basically saying, Hey, private sector, spend your equity dollars, do some preliminary work and that will help us decide what we want, Shahin Farshchi, a partner at Lux Capital, said October 29 at a satellite conference in California.
A data glut
At MaxarVantorthe makeover was years in the making, says Wilczynski. In 2022, the private equity firm Advent International purchased Maxar Technologies in an all-cash $6.4-billion transaction in 2022 and split its imagery and satellite businesses into separate divisions. Adventwhose business involves buying, repackaging and selling companiessaid the firms would prioritize work for the U.S. government and its allies as part of its broader defense portfolio. Since then, Maxar Intelligence has shaken up its executive team with tech veterans and rejiggered its business, with a focus on services and extracting insights from data.
Vantorwhich grew partly out of the early Google Maps partner DigitalGlobealso operates ten satellites built by Maxar and another ancestor, GeoEye. Its six WorldView Legion satellites produce some of the highest-resolution color images commercially available, down to 30 centimeters, or 15 with enhancementgood enough to count individual tanks and the crowns of trees. (Only Airbuss satellites offer a comparable resolution.) Dozens of other companies operate some 1,200 earth observation satellites, helping governments and companies keep tabs on everything from airbases to mines to big box parking lots in a zoo of formats, from optical to hyperspectral to SAR and RF.
All this adds up to a problem of too much space data, more than humans can look at, let alone sort, combine, or usefully analyze. Its like a thousand times, a million times, the data that you were handling 10 years ago, says Wilczynski, who previously helped develop Palantirs data management system and geospatial platform.
The glut has pushed Maxar and its two large earth observation rivals, Planet and BlackSky, to become more like tech firms, building AI to combine data from space and other domains like drones and phones, and devising slick interfaces that can extract objects and flag changes on Earth and at sea. (Years ago, a similar flood of video evidenceand the subscription services involved in managing itled th law enforcement contractor Taser to hire executives from Tesla and Apple, build a cloud-based platform, and rebrand as Axon.)
Incumbent players are only now moving into the world of rapid data fusion, says Antila of Kuva, which plans to sell defense customers subscription-based access to its hyperspectral microsatellites; on-board Nvidia chips will help speed up data processing. But it remains to be seen how quickly they can reset their existing processes and business models.
At Vantor, that effort has meant a range of new partnerships and products, from analysis tools to near-real-time 3D globes, to less traditional ways of presenting and selling geospatial data. Ninety percent of Vantors revenue now comes from subscriptions and recurring contracts, amounting to over $900 million, a business the company projects will grow by double digits this year.
Geopolitics are driving countries to want eyes faster
In part, the shift can be traced to a set of color images taken by Maxar on November 1, 2021. The photos, first published in Politico, showed tanks massing near the Ukrainian border. That, and subsequent Maxar imagery, helped convince the world that Putin was serious about his plans to invade, more than three months before it actually happened.
NEW: Photos show Russian troops & equipment, including hundreds of tanks, self-propelled artillery and an Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile are deployed in a training area located approx 160 miles north of the Russia Ukraine border.: @Maxar pic.twitter.com/qXkj7V1yeI— Elizabeth Campbell (@ECampbell360) December 23, 2021
The war that followed was another reminder that commercial space data wasnt just a nice-to-have. Along with communications provided by Spacexs massive Starlink network, commercial satellites would prove pivotal for Ukraines defense: Since images by Vantor and other companies are unclassified, U.S. and NATO commanders and analysts could easily share them with Kiev, providing critical intelligence.
That sharing arrangement became well known in March, after President Donald Trump abruptly turned off Kievs access to a Maxar-run digital atlas used by the Pentagon and other US agencies and overseas partners. The White House restored access 11 days later, but the episode unnerved U.S. allies around the globe.
The moment was a wake-up call for partners around the world, and weve seen an uptick in demand from international government partners who want to pay for direct access to our spatial intelligence capabilities, says Wilczynski.
The push for more surveillance from space is said to be existential in the longer term, too. For defense and intelligence agencies facing the prospect of AI-powered weapons and drones, the data that comes from above will determine who wins future wars.
Geopolitics are driving countries to want eyes faster, Will Marshall, CEO of Planet, told a panel at World Space Business Week in September. The publicly traded company has signed deals with NATO, Germany, and Wales. It has also announced a new factory in Berlin, and seen its stock more than triple this year. People are very worried, and countries want to have their own independent means of surveying the world, he said.
Since July, Vantor has signed over $300 million in contracts, including a deal with Taiwanese aerospace firm AIDC for Raptor, a system that uses its 3D terrain models to guide swarms of drones. Under a separate Army contract, Vantor is also building a 3D virtual globe for training and planning. Last month, the company also signed a deal with the Space Force to capture images of other satellites, a growing concern amid tensions in orbit. Wilczynski puts the market for its products next year at $2 billion. One of Vantors largest U.S. government contracts is for GEGD, the web-based portal that provides unclassified imagery and geospatial data to 400,000 users across federal agencies and U.S. partners. The company last year also won a contract to provide AI capabilities for programs that help analysts at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency monitor industrial sites and detect vehicles and ships. That work has informed some of its new commercial AI products.
A screenshot from Vantor’s Sentry platform, which uses AI to detect objects and flag changes [Image: 2025 Vantor]
The shift toward defense represents something of a return to the industrys roots. The space industry has traditionally been propelled by intelligence agencies, which provide the large stable contracts needed to put expensive satellites into orbit. Over the past decade, Maxar and a growing number of earth observation firms have expanded into civil and corporate applications, including mining, energy, finance, insurance, and disaster relief.
The public is left out
But for Vantor and the rest of the industry, the picture of the future is still murky.
As defense budgets explode, U.S. government budgets for civil and commercial contracts are shrinking. The Trump administrations $18.8-billion budget for NASA, pending Congresss approval, pushes the space agency to its lowest level since 161, and cuts nearly half of its science mission funding, or a third of its science portfolio. On the defense side, where the Pentagon is investing in more of its own satellites (including a requested $40 billion for the Space Force), the administration has proposed about $130 million in cuts to its commercial imagery contracts.
In a letter to Congress in June, executives from Vantor and other firms protested the cuts, arguing they would cede U.S. leadership in space. The decision to abandon Americas vetted and reliable commercial remote sensing capabilities, while adversaries China, Russia and Iran rapidly expand their state-backed Earth observation infrastructure is ironic, shortsighted, and perilous, says the letter.
The industry’s concerns underscore the gravitational pull of defense budgets, and the reality that demand for space imagery among non-government customers hasnt been as high as some had expected. There are only so many government contracts, and commercial demand never lived up to the hype, Tushar Prabhakar, founder of Orbital Sidekick (OSK), a hyperspectral data company, wrote at Space Republic. So maybe the real question isnt about Maxar. Its how does this industry finally break free of its own gravity well?The industry shifts are also raising eyebrows among advocates for public space data.
Commercial and government programs like the U.S.s Landsat and the EU’s Sentinel have been foundational for climate science, agriculture, and disaster relief for decades. Vantor and other EO companies also run open data programs, providing imagery in the wake of disasters. U.S. and Western governments subsidize some access to commercial data for use by scientific and humanitarian users. Public portals like NASA WorldView, EO Browser, the Copernicus Browser, Google Earth Pro Microsofts Planetary Computer, Esris Living Atlas, and OpenAerialMap offer tools for searching, sharing, and using various kinds of satellite and drone imagery.
But all of those programs are contingent on goodwill. And researchers have reported significant gaps in the coverage provided by public data. For instance, there is no comprehensive repository of recent or historical high-resolution imagery, which could be valuable for a range of humanitarian and environmental challenges.
As the industry focuses more on the defense and intelligence sector and government budget cuts threaten research satellites, public access to critical data could be at risk.
Thats my worry, says Bill Greer, a geospatial analyst who worked on humanitarian mapping at Maxar and founded Common Space, a nonprofit trying to launch its own satellite for research purposes. A complete enclosure of satellite imagery by defense and intelligence, where the public is left out.
Seeing the Earth in near-real time
To see how space got here, zoom out a bit.
It was Space Imaging, Maxars ancestor, that launched the first spy-grade commercial satellite in 1999, with a then eye-popping resolution of 1 meter per pixel. Since then, a parade of advancementsincluding SpaceXs reusable rocketsmade it much cheaper for giants and upstarts alike to bring large and small satellites to orbit.In February, Maxar hit a critical milestone. Six years after a mechanical failure took out one of its costly Legion satellites, it successfully launched two more, Legion 5 and 6, aboard a SpaceX rocket. If that program did not work, says Wilczynski, there was not a company.
Once the satellites were up, the time was right for the company to go on offense, and turn a lot of the latent potential that the company had into something that’s a little bit more concrete and durable.
While Maxar was a SpaceX-like space behemoth, says Wilczynski, with tentacles reaching across the whole space domain, we were really trying to think about a company that was more vertically integrated across space, air, and ground, using the space-based data as the global foundation, he says.
All the data is handled by TensorGlobe, a set of cloud-based technical services built to process an unceasing flow of high-resolution imagery, covering some six million square miles per day.
Wilczynski likens the infrastructure to Amazon Web Services, but for geospatial data, continuously ingesting, stitching, and enhancing. That’s really valuable for a customer who’s trying to build a spatial intelligence system that takes imagery from multiple providers, he says.
People heading north on the coastal road in Gaza, October 10, 2025 [Image: Satellite image 2025 Vantor]
With a zoo of vendors, combining and making sense of the data at speed is one challenge. It will be interesting to see how Maxar is going to deal with the interoperability of various data sources and do it in a near-real-time cadence, says Antila.Wilczynski agrees. The hurdles for earth imagery now arent about hardware, but an information overload challenge of data coming from each of those domains being pretty siloed, being pretty disconnected, he says. And this is something that I was really fascinated about at Palantir, thinking about knowledge graphs and connecting semantic data.
Wilczynski says defense agencies are already using the platform to choose from a mix of government and commercial satellites, just as companies might split their data workloads between their own data centers and cloud services. And as AI models learn from the work of human analysts, the system is helping automate the process too. That scheduling’s actually very hard, he says.
So is turning all the imagery into a single 3D map, in near real-time. Other algorithms, from the startup Ecopia AI, layer on 2D vector base maps,with features like building footprints, roads, and land cover. Yet more software wraps a mess of images onto a “living” globe.
These models form the basis of Raptor, a system that helps drones navigate by terrain in GPS-denied environments like Ukraine. They also feed the U.S. Armys One World Terrain program, which will provide geospatial data for the mixed-reality headset project started by Microsoft and now led by Anduril.
The 3D maps can be continuously enriched and verified against new imagery coming from sensors on helmets and drones. And those real world terrain models can then be used to train geospatial AI models, more firmly grounding them to prevent dangerous falsehoods in the outputs. Researchers at IBM, Google, and elsewhere have also released dynamic maps and geospatial AI models that have been used by insurance companies and disaster relief groups.
A lot of how we’re thinking about the risks of AI are, how do you continue to use real world observations to keep the system from spiraling away into some false hallucination of what’s happening by connecting it to the world, says Wilczynski.
A cloudy picture
Even as the data gets better and faster, the ground is shifting beneath the industrys feet.
As part of the budget proposal for NASA submitted earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed abandoning more than 40 missions, including at least 14 Earth science missions. The White House has also called for a roughly 30% reductionabout $130 millionin the National Reconnaissance Offices procurement of imagery under its commercial imagery purchasing program. The administration is also seeking to eliminate funding entirely for synthetic aperture radar imagery, a capability widely used since Russias invasion of Ukraine.
In a June 16 letter, the CEOs of Maxar, Planet, BlackSky, Iceye US, Capella Space, and ground systems provider KSAT told the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, and Intelligence committees that the budget cuts would undercut Trumps Golden Dome plans, stall the Space Forces initiative to create a Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, and derail U.S. leadership in AI development.
Commercial imagery can be used today, or they can wait six, eight years and spend billions of dollars building systems, Susanne Hake, general manager of Vantors U.S. government business, said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit in September. We commercial companies have shown that we can deliver at scale, but in order to do that, we do need long-term contracts and consistent funding in order for us to be able to build our technology.
Vivid Features vectors in Reynosa, Mexico, including road centerlines and 2D and 3D building footprints
But for Bill Greer, of CommonSpace, the markets continued reliance on the defense sector comes at the expense of other, less-resourced users. Maxars rebrand looks like private equity positioning for a sale, likely to defense primes or similar players, he wrote on LinkedIn. If that happens, we can expect further restrictions on who gets access to this data, price increases to make the more restricted data more profitable, and restrictions on how the data is used. Government will pay more for access to the same data, and end users will miss out entirely.
Some have advocated for government rules that say any imagery purchased with taxpayer dollars be released to a wider array of civic users. Groups like UN-SPIDER have also pushed for more capacity and training for Earth observation, especially in developing countries.Satellite companies could also open up more of their archives. If they did, Greer thinks the industry could drive more non-defense commercial business. This is a big spot where the commercial industry gets it wrong, he says. They’re not developing the market without allowing access to that data.
Sentry integrates Vantor’s Cortex and Forge software to automate multi-constellation orchestration and intelligence analysis.
Theres some historical precedent here. The Landsat program began providing then-precious 60-meter views of Earth in 1972, but its full impact was limited by cost, with prices reaching $4,500 per scene during the 1980s when the commercial sector operated the satellite. In 2008, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) transitioned to a policy of open data, free to users.
The impact was immediate. Daily downloads skyrocketed from 53 scenes to more than 5,700, and within three years, a report found annual economic benefits of $1.7 billion in the United States alone, according to a June report by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a partnership of governments and international organizations. By 2023, those benefits had grown to $25 billion annually, far exceeding the $5 million collected in data sales by the USGS. The open data enabled projects like Australias water resource mapping, which analysed 300,000 Landsat scenes to grasp continental-scale water trends, and, said GEO, catalysed a global movement toward open-access Earth observation.
Greer would like to see the commercial sector follow Landsats lead and open up more of its data. The problem is that this data is super good, and access isn’t, he says. He adds: My hope is that you start seeing more of that [data], and then that leads to tasking, and there would actually be growth in the industry, and more people that actually understand the value.
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Before becoming CEO and president of C.H. Robinson in 2023, Dave Bozeman worked at four of the worlds most iconic companies: Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Caterpillar, Amazon, and Ford Motor Company.
During each stop, he gleaned valuable lessons:
Harley-Davidson (16 years): The motorcycle maker educated him on the power of lean principles, including continuous improvement and just-in-time inventory management. He adds: I learned the value of connecting with people who do the work. I came in as an engineer, but I wanted to be on the [manufacturing] floor.
Caterpillar (9 years): The construction and mining equipment maker offered him an opportunity to experience operational excellence globally and at scale. Cat allowed me to see that people around the globe want to do a great job, but they want clean process and workflows to do that, he says.
Amazon (5+ years): Bozeman built the tech giants Middle Mile global transportation business, which moves customer orders from vendors and fulfillment centers to its sorting facilities and delivery stations. Amazon allowed me to learn how to solve problems at scale with technology, he says.
Ford (1 year): While heading customer service and enthusiast brands such as Mustang and Bronco, Bozeman says his time at the automaker offered a deeper, tactile understanding of how things get made. It was really about getting back to touch, feel, smell, he says.
Bozmans collection of experiencesindustrial, technology, transportationprepared him to run C.H. Robinson, a freight broker connecting shippers with truck, rail, ocean, and air carriers. But it is a customer-centricity he learned from all four companies that is helping propel his modernization and transformation of the 120-year-old company.
These companies, at their heart, are all about the customer, he says. Its an obsession at Amazon; at Harley-Davidson, the customers tattooed themselves [with the company logo]; at Caterpillar, youre in the dirt with them; and Ford is all about the brand and its customers. Thats why Im obsessed with customers and customer service.
Dealing with the “freight recession”
C.H. Robinson customers have benefitted from several new programs announced on Bozemans watch. The company is deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the speed and volume of freight quotesthe estimated cost to ship goods. Touchless appointments technology schedules freight pickups and deliveries, replacing a process traditionally handled by phone or email, and AI chooses the ideal appointment time.
As a result of cost cutting, divestitures, and productivity gains, the company earlier this year reported an 11% reduction in staffing. Its not just about headcount, Bozeman counters. We look at it as upskilling; were investing in customer-facing people, who can now help solve supply-chain, logistical problems with customers as we move away from manual tasking.
Bozeman says implementing new technology and disciplined execution have been keys to its improved financial performance. Despite a freight recession, marked by weak demand and low rates, C.H. Robinson posted a 68% increase in third-quarter net income even as revenue fell 11% to $4.1 billion. The company says the recent quarter was its seventh straight period of outperforming analyst earnings-per-share estimates.
At a time when many of C.H. Robinsons customers face supply-chain challenges and tariff uncertainty, Bozeman is applying lessons hes learned firsthand from timeless brands and putting them to work in new ways. The result: C.H. Robinsons companys ability to innovate may prove to be a competitive edge during a challenging time for freight.
Experience counts
Leaders often use their past experience in new ways. What are some of the lessons youve collected from the different companies youve helped lead? How have they benefited the company you lead now? Share your top takeaways from each rolebrief bullet points are greatand well compile unexpected experiences in a future newsletter.
Also, were still soliciting nominations for the 2025 Modern CEO of the Year. Please nominate yourself or someone you admire via this link. Submissions are due November 21.
Read more: CEO lessons
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Beautycounter founder Gregg Renfrews season of learning
GE Vernovas Scott Strazik is trying to rekindle its former parents entrepreneurial zeal
At its best, work can be energizing, creative, and meaningful. It can also be emotionally exhausting and stressful. Even in healthy organizations, we all deal with interpersonal tension, stinging feedback, impossible deadlines, and the constant pressure to perform. Add in the rapid pace of change and a steady diet of uncertainty, and its no wonder many of us feel perpetually on edge.
Stress isnt just a sign that somethings wrongits a signal that something matters. Emotions like frustration, anxiety, and excitement all contain useful data about whats important to us, what we value, and what we need. Yet in most workplaces, were trained to treat emotions as distractions from rational thought rather than as essential information that guides it. When we ignore or misread that emotional data, we lose access to one of our most valuable internal resources.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), originally developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan to help individuals struggling with chronic emotion dysregulation, offers a powerful framework for understanding and responding to emotions effectively. DBT isnt about suppressing or indulging emotionsits about interpreting them accurately and acting wisely in response. The same skills that help people navigate crises and build healthier relationships can help you stay centered in a difficult meeting, receive feedback without spiraling, and recover from professional setbacks with greater resilience.
Heres how DBTs core principles can help you use your emotions as dataand manage stress and intensity at work more effectively.
1. Recognize When Youre in Emotion Mind and Do Something Different
DBT starts with the idea that many of our problems arise from emotion dysregulationfeeling hijacked by strong emotions and acting in ways that make things worse.
At work, that might look like firing off a reactive email, shutting down in a tense discussion, or replaying a negative interaction long after its over. These reactions come from what DBT calls Emotion Minda state in which feelings drive thoughts and behavior, often overriding reason and long-term goals.
The antidote is Wise Mind, the integration of emotion and reason. Wise Mind is the space where you can both acknowledge how you feel and still act in ways that serve your goals.
When you notice your pulse racing before a presentation or frustration mounting in a team meeting, take a breath. Ask yourself: What is this emotion trying to tell me? Maybe its signaling that you care about doing well, that you value fairness, or that you need more clarity. Once youve decoded that data, you can decide how to respond skillfully rather than react impulsively.
2. Check the Facts
Emotions provide information, but not all that information is accurate. Sometimes theyre based on assumptions or incomplete data. You might feel angry when a manager doesnt include you on an email chain and interpret it as rejection, or anxious when a colleagues brief message reads as criticism.
DBTs Check the Facts skill helps you distinguish between what your emotions are telling you and whats actually happening. Ask yourself:
What exactly happened?
What are other possible explanations?
Am I assuming intent I cant verify?
This isnt about invalidating your feelingstheyre real, even if the story attached to them isnt. Its about ensuring your next action fits the facts, not your assumptions. When you treat emotions as data, checking the facts becomes the emotional equivalent of verifying a source before acting on it.
3. Practice Opposite Action to Change Your Emotion
Once youve checked the facts, you can choose whether to act on an emotion or shift it. DBTs Opposite Action skill is a behavioral way to update your emotional data. If your emotion doesnt fit the facts, you do the opposite of what it urges you to do.
If youre angry and want to withdraw or lash out, the opposite action might be to approach calmly and with curiosity. If youre anxious before a presentation and want to avoid, the opposite action might be to step forwardto practice, to engage, and to risk.
Opposite Action doesnt mean pretending to feel great when you dont. Its about behaving in line with your goals rather than your impulsesand, over time, reshaping the emotion itself.
4. Use Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills to Navigate Difficult Conversations
Emotional data doesnt just live inside usit shows up between us. Interpersonal friction is inevitable, especially in environments with high stakes and constant feedback. DBT offers practical tools for these moments.
The skill of DEAR MAN provides a clear structure for asserting needs or saying no effectively:
Describe the situation objectively.
Express how you feel or what you think.
Assert what you want or dont want.
Reinforce why collaboration helps everyone.
Stay Mindful of your goal.
Appear confident, even if you dont feel it.
Negotiate when needed.
You might say:
The last few deadlines have been difficult to meet because the workload has increased significantly. Im feeling stretched thin. Id like to discuss redistributing tasks or adjusting the timeline so the work remains high-quality.
By integrating emotion and reason, you turn emotional informationIm overwhelmedinto effective communication. Thats what Wise Mind looks like in real time.
5. Cultivate Mindfulness of Current Emotions
Mindfulness, the foundation of DBT, helps us observe emotional data without reacting to it. When youre flooded with stressheart pounding, shoulders tense, thoughts racingpause for a moment and name whats happening.
Tension in my chest. Tightness in my jaw. Thoughts saying, I cant handle this.
Labeling activates the brains prefrontal cortex, shifting you from reaction to reflection. You move from being in the emotion to observing it. That small shiftrecognizing emotion as data rather than as dangercan completely change how you respond.
6. Practice Radical Acceptance
Sometimes the data your emotions deliver points to something you cant change: a difficult colleague, a lost opportunity, or an organizational decision you dont agree with. Fighting that reality adds suffering to pain.
Radical Acceptance means acknowledging reality fully so you can decide what to do next from clarity rather than denial. You can say:
I dont like this, and its happening.
This situation is painful, and resisting it isnt helping.
Acceptance doesnt mean resignationit means seeing the full picture so you can use your emotional data wisely rather than fighting it blindly.
7. Build Resilience Proactively
Most of us think of reslience as bouncing back after stress, but DBT teaches that resilience starts before the stress hits. Skills like PLEASE (taking care of physical health) and ABC (accumulating positive emotions, building mastery, and coping ahead) help maintain emotional stability so your system processes stress more accurately.
When your body and mind are well cared for, youre less likely to misread emotional signals as threats. Daily habitssleep, nutrition, movement, connectionarent just wellness clichés. Theyre how you keep your internal data system online and responsive.
A New Model of Effectiveness at Work
DBTs philosophy is dialectical: balancing acceptance and change. In the workplace, that means recognizing that emotion and reason arent opposites to be managedtheyre partners to be integrated.
Emotions are data. They tell us what matters, guide our attention, and strengthen connection. But like any data, they require interpretation and skill to use well. The most effective people and teams arent the ones who avoid emotional intensity; theyre the ones who train for itwho can read emotional cues accurately and respond with balance and wisdom.
Thats the heart of DBT: learning to stay grounded, curious, and fully human in the middle of lifesand workschaos.
Adapted from Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships (Guilford Press, 2026).
President Barack Obama famously chided Donald Trump in April 2011 during the annual White House correspondents dinner. The reality show star had repeatedly and falsely claimed that Obama had not been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president.
Trumps demands that Obama release his birth certificate had, in part, made Trump a front-runner among Republican hopefuls for their partys nomination in the following years presidential election.
Obama referred to Trumps presidential ambitions by joking that, if elected, Trump would bring some changes to the White House.
Obama then called attention to a satirical photo the guests could see of a remodeled White House with the words Trump and The White House in large purple letters, followed by the words hotel, casino, and golf course.
A projected image is shown on a large screen during President Barack Obama’s speech at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Gala at the Washington Hilton hotel, Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2011. The president showed his humorous side to show what a “Trump” White House might look like. [Photo: Martin H Simon/UPI/Shutterstock]
Obamas ridicule of Trump that evening has been credited with inspiring Trump to run for president in 2016.
My book, The Art of the Political Putdown, includes Obamas chiding of Trump at the correspondents dinner to demonstrate how politicians use humor to establish superiority over a rival.
Obamas ridicule humiliated Trump, who temporarily dropped the birther conspiracy before reviving it. But Trump may have gotten the last laugh by using the humiliation of that night, as some think, as motivation in his run for the presidency in 2016.
Demolition of the East Wing of the White House continues for the construction on U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed new ballroom, on October 26, 2025, in Washington, D.C. [Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images]
There is a further twist to Obama joking about Trumps renovations to the White House if Trump became president. Trump has fulfilled Obamas prediction, kind of.
The Trump administration has razed the East Wing, which sits adjacent to the White House, and will replace it with a 90,000-square-foot, gold-encrusted ballroom that appears to reflect the ostentatious tastes of the president.
The US$300 million ballroom will be twice the size of the White House.
President Donald Trump speaks holding a photos of the new ballroom during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on October 22, 2025. [Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post/Getty Images]
Its expected to be big enough to accommodate nearly a thousand people. Design renderings suggest that the ballroom will resemble the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, the presidents private estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
I dont have any plan to call it after myself, Trump said recently. That was fake news. Probably going to call it the presidential ballroom or something like that. We havent really thought about a name yet.
But senior administration officials told ABC News that they were already referring to the structure as The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.
The renovation will have neither a hotel, casino, nor golf course, as Obama mentioned in his lighthearted speech at the 2011 correspondents dinner.
Obama pokes fun at Trump
In the months before the 2011 correspondents dinner, Trump had repeatedly claimed that Obama had not been born in Hawaii but had instead been born outside the United States, perhaps in his fathers home country of Kenya.
The baseless conspiracy theory became such a distraction that Obama released his long-form birth certificate in April 2011.
Three days later, Obama delivered his speech at the correspondents dinner with Trump in the audience, where he said that Trump, having put the birther conspiracy behind him, could move to other conspiracy theories like claims the moon landing was staged, aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico, or the unsolved murders of rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.
Did we fake the moon landing? Obama said. What really happened at Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?
Obama then poked fun at Trumps reality show, The Apprentice, and referred to how Trump, who owned hotels, casinos, and golf courses, might renovate the White House.
When Obama was finished, Seth Meyers, the host of the dinner, made additional jokes at Trumps expense.
Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republicanwhich is surprising, since I just assumed that he was running as a joke, Meyers said.
Trump gets the last laugh
The New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik remembered watching Trump as the jokes kept coming at his expense.
Trumps humiliation was as absolute, and as visible, as any I have ever seen: his head set in place, like a man on a pillory, he barely moved or altered his expression as wave after wave of laughter struck him, Gopnik wrote. There was not a trace of feigning good humor about him.
Roger Stone, one of Trumps top advisers, said Trump decided to run for president after he felt he had been publicly humiliated.
I think that is the night he resolves to run for president, Stone said in an interview with the PBS program Frontline. I think that he is kind of motivated by it. Maybe Ill just run. Maybe Ill show them all.
Trump, if Stone and other political observers are correct, sought the presidency to avenge that humiliation.
I thought, Oh, Barack Obama is starting something that I dont know if hell be able to finish, said Omarosa Manigault, a former Apprentice contestant who became Trumps director of African American outreach during his first term.
Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump, she said. It is everyone whos ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged himit is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.
The notoriously thin-skinned Trump did not attend the White House correspondents dinner during his first presidency. He also did not attend the dinner during the first year of his second presidency.
Although Trump has never publicly acknowledged the importance of that event in 2011, a number of people have noted how pivotal it was, demonstrating how the putdown can be a powerful weapon in politicseven, perhaps, extending to tearing down the White Houses East Wing.
Chris Lamb is a professor of journalism at Indiana University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Company culture doesnt affect performance. Thats not a hot take, thats what a 2022 meta analysis from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found when they compared more than 500 research papers on the topic. From the report:
The findings are very clear: there is little evidence consistently linking organizational culture to performance, but if such a link should exist, it is very weak and too small to be practically meaningful. As such, organizations and practitioners should be careful spending time and money on company-wide culture change programs as they are not likely to increase performance.
And yet, when asked, 92% of executives believe that improving their firms culture would increase the value of their company. So are 92% of executives wrong? And are millions, if not billions, of dollars wasted each year on culture efforts?
The short answer? Yes and yes. The full answer is a bit more complicated.
Why the myth persists
Leaders cling to the idea that culture drives results because it feels controllable. You can write new values, host an off-site, or hire a chief culture officer. Its far easier to reprint the employee handbook than to rewire incentives, decision-making, or priorities. Culture talk offers the illusion of progresssomething visible, moral, and manageablewhile the real performance drivers remain untouched.
Company culture is still deeply misunderstood
Many leaders talk about culture as something you havea vibe, a set of values, a moodrather than something you do. But culture is not a static asset; its the emergent result of how decisions are made, what gets rewarded or punished, and which behaviors the system makes easy or hard. When executives say we need a culture of innovation, but still require six layers of approval for new ideas, theyre confusing aspiration for infrastructure.
Leaders arent being honest about their culture, or with themselves
Research from MIT Sloan Management Review (2020) found no correlation between a companys stated values and the lived experience of its employees. In other words, what leaders say their culture is and what people actually feel day-to-day are worlds apart. Firms with large culture gaps see lower productivity and impaired alignment. The misalignment fuels cynicism and distrust, undermining managerial credibility and depleting morale. Employees in these organizations report reduced commitment and higher turnover. Instead of confronting that gap, many double down on optics: slogans, all-hands pep talks, or off-sites meant to rebuild trust.
But culture isnt changed through words or ritualsits changed through systems. Decision rights, information flow, meeting cadence, and incentives form the real architecture of behavior. Until leaders are honest enough to align those structures with their rhetoric, culture initiatives will keep delivering the same result: symbolic satisfaction with no measurable performance gains.
Leaders arent being strategic about their culture
Every era has its cultural role modelthe company everyone else is told to emulate. In the 90s it was Jack Welchs GE. Then it was Apple, then Amazon. Now its Jensen Huangs Nvidia. Each time, executives rush to borrow their rituals and slogans, hoping to import a little of their magic. But lets be honest: your company isnt that companyand it shouldnt be.
Culture is simply how strategy gets lived. Which means a best culture doesnt exist, only a fit cultureone that reinforces your distinct strategy and constraints. Copying someone elses culture while pursuing a different strategy isnt just naive, its counter-strategic.
The culture obsession is a distraction
The corporate world is hooked on culture because its comforting and it makes leadership feel human and moral. But culture talk often becomes a way to avoid harder truths: bad strategy, misaligned incentives, broken systems, and unclear ownership. In our experience as a consulting partner to some of the worlds largest and most complex companies, a culture problem is usually a smokescreen for problems that leaders have long known about and shirked responsibility for: a nice way to avoid assigning blame or deflecting responsibility. And when we analyzed 1,700 public companies and their Glassdoor ratings, we found that the No. 1 topic among negative reviews were complaints about leaders and management. So, poor leadership produces poor cultures.
What to do instead
Before rushing to rewrite values, produce swag, or drag people to town halls, leaders first need to hold themselves accountable. Do they actually behave in the way they hope others will? Do they collaborate with their peers as one company or is that really just a slogan? Does the way they allocate resources match what they claim to prioritize? Are the people theyre promoting really the best culture bearers or merely squeaky wheels or political players?
Then, leaders should consider culture as the shadow cast by the operating model they design and manage. If you want to change the shadow, you have to move the object casting it. That means redesigning how decisions get made, how information travels, and what gets measured and rewarded. Culture is not a lever to pull; its a reflection of the choices leadership makes every day about how work actually happens.
So yes, culture matters, just not in the way most executives think. You dont fix performance by fixing culture; you fix culture by fixing performance. Because in the end, culture lives in the rules you enforce, not the words you endorse.
