Back in January, Kohls announced that it would be closing 27 of its stores across America in order to help the company control costs and increase operational efficiency. At the time, Kohls described the closing locations as underperforming and said the closures will occur by April 2025.
And now it looks like Kohls remains on track for that by April deadline. As first noticed by USA Today, the 27 stores that Kohls had previously announced would be closing now list their last day of operation as this Saturday, March 29, on Kohls store locator tool.
For example, the store locator listing for the Kohls located at 1116 1st Street in Napa, California, now lists, in bright red letters, This store will be closing soon. Our last day of business at this location will be Saturday, March 29th.
Other closing locations also show the same message.
The listing for the Napa store goes on to reveal that its store hours for the last day of its operation will be from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. After that, the store will shut its doors to customers for good.
Kohls store closures 2025 full list
The 27 Kohls stores that are closing are spread across 15 states, with California being hit the hardest with 10 stores closing there. After the stores are closed on Saturday, Kohls will still operate over 1,120 locations across the country.
Announcing the closures in January, Kohls CEO Tom Kingsbury said, “We always take these decisions very seriously. As we continue to build on our long-term growth strategy, it is important that we also take difficult but necessary actions to support the health and future of our business for our customers and our teams.”
The full list of store closures is below.
Alabama
Spanish Fort – 21000 Town Center Ave.
Arkansas
Little Rock West – 13909 Chenal Pkwy.
California
Balboa (San Diego) – 5505 Balboa Ave.
Encinitas – 134 N El Camino Real
Fremont – 43782 Christy St.
Mountain View – 350 Showers Dr.
Napa – 1116 1st St.
Pleasanton – 4525 Rosewood Dr.
Point West (Sacramento) – 1896 Arden Way
San Rafael – 5010 Northgate Dr.
San Luis Obispo – 205 Madonna Rd.
Westchester – 8739 S Sepulveda Blvd.
Colorado
Arapahoe Crossing (Aurora) – 6584 S Parker Rd.
Georgia
Duluth – 2050 W Liddell Rd.
Idaho
Boise – 400 N Milwaukee St.
Illinois
Plainfield – 11860 S Route 59
Spring Hill (West Dundee) – 3000 Spring Hill Ring Rd.
Massachusetts
Stoughton – 501 Technology Center Dr.
New Jersey
East Windsor – 72 Princeton Hightstown Rd.
Ohio
Blue Ash – 4150 Hunt Rd.
Forest Park (Cincinnati) – 100 Cincinnati Mills Dr.
Oregon
Portland Gateway – 10010 NE Halsey St.
Pennsylvania
Pottstown – 351 W Schuylkill Rd.
Texas
North Dallas – 18224 Preston Rd.
Utah
Riverton – 13319 S 3600 W Ste 13LOT
Virginia
Herndon – 2100 Centreville Rd.
Williamsburg – 100 Gristmill Plz
At eight months pregnant with my first child, I walked into my bosss office, ready for a pivotal meeting. I had spent months designing a new crisis management program for our universityone that would improve student outcomes and reduce institutional risk. This was the moment Id learn whether my work would be implemented.
I had poured everything into this project. It reflected my expertise, positioned the university at the forefront of best practices, andfor me personallyoffered the challenge and recognition I craved. My current role felt stagnant, and this opportunity was exactly what I needed.
My boss was thrilled with my proposal and agreed I was the right person to lead it. Then, she hesitated. But, she said, you may not want it.
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I was stunned.
Of course, I wanted it. It was a promotion I had essentially built for myself. But she smiled and, with what she saw as kindness, said, Once the baby comes, you may find that youre less interested in work. You might be less . . . ambitious. Youre going to find that youre a different person.
I assured her I wanted the role, and the promotion was official. But her words cast a shadow over the good news. Less ambitious? Change my identity? What kind of sexist nonsense was that? I knew exactly who I was, and I wasnt about to prove her right.
When motherhood becomes a career liability
I hadnt even given birth, yet I was already experiencing the motherhood penaltya term that refers to the economic and career disadvantages that mothers often face in the workplace compared to their childless counterparts and fathers. Sociologists have long studied this phenomenon and have found that, to compensate, working mothers often feel pressured to downplay their parental responsibilities to be taken seriously at work.
When I returned to work after maternity leave, I found myself doing exactly this. I shared my parenting experiences with only a small group of trusted colleagues, wary of confirming anyones biases. My bosss words still echoed in my head. Even in an institution more supportive of working parents than most, I didnt want anyone to doubt my dedication.
The COVID-19 pandemic briefly shattered this illusion. When kids interrupted Zoom meetings asking for help with virtual school, hiding our parental roles became impossible. But now many of us feel pressure to return to the pre-pandemic norms of keeping motherhood in the background. The unspoken expectation remains: Be present as a professional first, a parent second.
Of course, the pressure to separate our professional and personal identities comes at a steep cost. When employees feel they cant be authentic at work, they disengage, burn out, or leave. This isnt just a loss for individualsits a loss for organizations that miss out on the creativity, resilience, and leadership working parents bring to the table.
Bridging the gap
Ironically, my boss was rightbut not in the way she expected. After having my son, I did change. I returned to work with a broader perspective, increased flexibility in my thinking, and with a deeper well of empathy. And these changes made me a different kind of professionalthey made me better.
Parenthood forces us to develop skills that translate directly into leadership: patience, conflict resolution, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. It forces us to prioritize, make decisions under pressure, and manage competing demands. These skills and perspectives are deeply needed in todays workplaces.
We need to stop pretending that work and parenting exist in opposition. The more we integrate these identities, the stronger we becomeas professionals, as leaders, and as humansand the stronger our organizations become.
Its time to rewrite the narrative. Parenthood deepens our capacity for leadership, strengthens our problem-solving skills, and fuels our drive to create a better world for the next generation. The real challenge isnt whether working parents can stay committed to their careersits whether workplaces can evolve to recognize the full value they bring.
So instead of downplaying our role as parents, what if we embraced it as an asset? What if we stopped proving our worth by pretending caregiving doesnt exist, and instead reshaped professional culture to reflect the reality that so many of us live? The more openly we integrate our identities, the more we create space for others to do the same.
I didnt lose my ambition when I became a mother. If anything, it sharpened. The question isnt whether we change after parenthoodits whether we allow those changes to make us stronger. And whether the workplace is ready to keep up.
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Last week, President Donald Trump fired more people as part of his ongoing quest to prevent the government from doing the basic work of governing. This time, his targets were the two remaining Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whose continued service Trump declared to be inconsistent with his agenda.
Their terminations, along with the resignation of FTC Chair Lina Khan earlier this year, mean that three of the Commissions five seats are, at least for the time being, vacant. They also mean that only remaining members of the federal agency charged with promoting fair competition and protecting consumers from the worst excesses of corporate greed are Andrew Ferguson, the newly-promoted chair, and Melissa Holyoak, two Republicans who now can do more or less whatever they want.
Bedoya and Slaughter have promised to sue, and for good reason: Firing commissioners without cause is, to use a technical term, extremely illegal. Under the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, which established the agency, commissioners serve seven-year terms, and presidents may only remove them for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. In 1935, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these for-cause protections in Humphreys Executor v. United States, a case in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to fire an FTC member with whom he had political differencesin other words, exactly what Trump is trying to do almost a century later. Humphreys Executor is basic, first-year-of-law-school stuff; if this fact pattern were to appear on a final exam, every law student would answer correctly.
Conservative activists, who abhor even modest impositions on executive power, have been whittling away at Humphreys Executor for years. Trumps attempts to fire Bedoya and Slaughter, among the other independent agency heads hes tried to dismiss of late, could be the Republican Partys best chance yet to dispose of what remains of this annoying constraint on his authority. Already, Trumps Department of Justice has said it wont defend Humphreys Executor in court, which is roughly the equivalent of holding up a giant sign outside Brett Kavanaughs house that says PLEASE OVERTURN ASAP.
But Trump wants to do more than generate yet another test case to get the Courts conservative supermajority to get rid of yet another legal precedent the Republican Party doesnt like. Since President Joe Biden appointed Khan, then a 32-year-old antitrust lawyer, as the FTCs youngest-ever chair in 2021, conservatives have portrayed the Commission as an anti-capitalism supervillain, bemoaning its insistence on burdening virtuous corporations with onerous regulations that snarl the beautiful, frictionless operation of the free market. Firing Bedoya and Slaughter is one of Trumps many gifts to his plutocrat backers. If upheld in court, their terminations will make it easier for corporations to rip you off, and less likely that the government will do anything about it.
Congress formed the Federal Trade Commission in response to the explosion of corporate power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and charged the agency with preventing unfair methods of competition, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. The FTC publishes rules defining what practices, exactly, qualify as unfair or deceptive, and can sue companies that violate those rules. The rationale is simple: A basic premise of the U.S. economic systemthe notion that competition is good for everyoneunravels quickly when deep-pocketed players are free to jack up prices, suppress wages, squeeze out small businesses, defraud their customers, and otherwise manipulate the market.
The FTC hasnt always lived up to its lofty promises. But Khan was far more aggressive than her predecessors about prosecuting anticompetitive practices, especially with respect to Big Tech, which had remained several steps ahead of a dated regulatory infrastructure ill-equipped to tackle all the ways that modern Silicon Valley behemoths grind competitors into dust. Under her leadership, the FTC brought high-profile lawsuits against Amazon and Meta, and reached a $150 million settlement with Twitter over alleged targeted-advertising privacy violations. When announcing a lawsuit against Amazon, which the FTC accused of squeezing third-party sellers on the platform while promoting its own products, Khan declined to rule out trying to break up the company or holding executives personally accountable for the alleged misconduct.
Other aspects of the FTCs work had a more direct impact on consumers day-to-day lives. The agency passed a rule requiring companies to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up, thus ending the days of desperately scouring Reddit for the number to an unlisted phone line that no one ever answers. Another rule requires sellers to disclose all those previously hidden junk fees that had a funny way of inflating ticket prices and vacation rental rates well beyond the advertised price. Perhaps the FTCs most significant recent accomplishment is a ban on the enforcement of noncompete agreements, which would free millions of employees to leave their jobs without fear of retribution, and by one estimate would raise wages by $300 billion per year. Corporate interests quickly challenged the rule, which is temporarily on ice as the case winds its way through the federal court system.
Khans tenure earned plaudits from some politicians you might expect (Elizabeth Warren, who thanked her for showing what it loos like for the government to work for working people) and some you might not (JD Vance, who opined that Khan was doing a pretty good job in February 2024). But she infuriated the donor class, including the usual suspects on the rightthe Wall Street Journal alone has published more than 100 editorials, op-eds, and letters criticizing herand even some well-heeled Democratic fundraisers whod grown accustomed to permissive antitrust enforcement. The FTC, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, its analog for the banking and financial services industries, became reviled in boardrooms for doing the work of protecting normal people in this country at the expense of its oligarchs.
Things, to put it mildly, have changed since Trumps re-election. After Khan stepped down, Trump elevated Ferguson, whom the Senate confirmed as a commissioner in 2023, to replace her. A former Senate staffer who worked on both of Trumps first-term impeachment defenses, Ferguson lobbied for Khans job by pitching himself to the White House as a Trump loyalist who would stop Lina Khans war on mergers, end Lina Khans politically motivated investigations, and thwart the anti-business, anti-innovation agenda of the radical left. He also said he would fight back against the trans agenda, because a prerequisite for getting Trumps attention is promising to inflict pain and suffering on members of a marginalized group.
People whose outsized wealth and power felt threatened under Khan seem determined not to face such a nightmarish future again. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, whose companies have tangled with the FTC in recent years, are prostrating themselves at Trumps feet, writing seven-figure checks for his inauguration or, in Musks case, nine-figure checks in support of Trumps 2024 re-election bid. It is not a coincidence they are doing so as the FTC seeks Zuckerbergs testimony next month in its antitrust lawsuit against Meta, and prepares to take Amazon to trial this year over allegations that the company trapped customers in Prime subscriptions that were especially difficult to cancel. In an interview in January, Khan said she hoped the incoming administration would not offer a sweetheart deal to the tech executives cozying up to the president, but recognized that the matters were out of her hands. I cant predict what future people in my position are going to do, she said.
Bedoya and Slaughter, the fired commissioners, have what feels like a pretty airtight case: a near-century-old Supreme Court precedent that protects their jobs through the end of their respective terms. Khan is backing her former colleagues, framing their blatantly illegal firings as evidence of the White Houses enthusiasm for selling out consumers to the highest bidder. If what we care about is freedom, and making sure that Americans enjoy real liberties, allowing big corporations to abuse peopleto bully them, to coerce themis so antithetical to that idea of freedom, she told MSNBCs Ali Velshi earlier this week.
But precedent is only as useful as long as five justices are willing to uphold it, and this Supreme Court has functioned mostly as a rubber stamp for exercises of executive power, as long as the executive is Donald Trump. An eventual Supreme Court decision that empowers presidents to fire independent agency heads would further empower corporations to consolidate power and exploit regular people. In the meantime, Bedoya and Slaughters absence from the Federal Trade Commission will allow the Trump administration to get a nice head start.
Gen Z isnt just watching creatorstheyre choosing them over traditional TV and movies.
Thats the big takeaway from Deloittes 19th annual Digital Media Trends survey. The report finds that 56% of Gen Z and 43% of millennials find social media content more relevant than traditional entertainment options, and about half feel a stronger personal connection to social media creators than to actors or TV personalities.
The entertainment industry is in a battle for attention, competing for an average of six hours of daily screen time per person. But that number isnt increasing. In this landscape, tech platforms have the upper hand over traditional studios and streamers, with online creators catering to every niche imaginable.
And younger consumers dont just watch creatorsthey trust them. A majority of Gen Z and millennials say creator content is their favorite type of video, and about half feel a stronger bond with influencers than with TV personalities or actors. These parasocial relationships keep fans invested, scrolling, and coming back for more. For younger audiences, viral videos arent just entertainmenttheyre the new primetime, and creators are todays stars.
That doesnt mean the grass never looks greener. A number of creators are making the leap to network TV and streaming platforms, where they can secure lucrative and stable contracts, gain exposure, and grow their audiences. Just as creators are building on their fame in traditional media, celebrities are also establishing themselves as brands and amassing followings on social media.
Its not just attention that media and entertainment companies are fighting forits also a limited pool of consumer spending. Subscription fatigue is real, and there are no signs of people paying more for streaming services. Instead, many are frustrated by rising prices and the hassle of juggling multiple subscriptions to access the content they want. Nearly half of those surveyed by Deloitte feel theyre overpaying for streaming services, and 41% say the content isnt worth the cost.
To compete for views in todays media landscape, traditional studios and streamers need to get with the program. As recently as two decades ago, pay TV was considered just as essential in the household as toilet paper. Fast forward to today, and for younger generations, TV is background noise while they scroll on their phones.
Natural disasters and extreme weather events are hammering America’s aging infrastructure. A new report lays out what the U.S. needs to do now to fix it, and it’s building more, better, and smarter infrastructure, from bridges, broadband, and dams to roads, levees, and parks.
The United States has made slight improvements to its infrastructure, according to the report from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a professional organization, but it still has a long ways to go, and it better pick up the pace because there are growing risks to public safety and the economy.
The ASCE gave infrastructure in the U.S. a C grade, citing forward momentum, but the U.S. faces a “substantial investment gap,” according to the report. Its authors recommended policymakers and lawmakers take three steps to close the gap: sustain their investments, prioritize resilience, and advance policy and innovation.
Sustain investment
The new rating is up from C- in the group’s most recent report, released in 2021, and the ASCE cited the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that former President Joe Biden signed into law for prompting the improved grade. More than 66,000 projects were funded by the law, including repairs and improvements to more than 196,000 miles of road and improvements to more than 1,500 airports. The group called Biden’s law “the most comprehensive federal investment in the nations infrastructure in U.S. history,” but said it will take time to fully come into effect.
“Recent federal and state investments have had a positive impact, but the full force of increased funding will take years to realize,” the report’s authors wrote. “Sustained investment is key to providing certainty and ensuring planning goes to development, as well as making larger infrastructure projects attainable.”
The group said after the bipartisan infrastructure law expires in 2026, Congress should maintain its investment levels.
Prioritize resilience
In addition to an overall score, the ASCE infrastructure report rated 18 individual categories, from aviation to wastewater. No category received an A rating. The highest-rated categories were ports and rail, which received a B and B-, respectively, and the lowest-rated categories were stormwater and transit, which both received Ds. The ASCE named extreme weather and disasters as pressing reasons for the U.S. to upgrade its infrastructure now.
The report’s authors said natural disasters and extreme weather events are especially damaging for America’s aging infrastructure, “creating unexpected and often avoidable risks to public safety and the economy.” They made an economic argument for building and strengthening resilient infrastructure.
“Climate-related challenges are widespread, affecting even regions previously resistant to these events: Floods become more intense and occur more often, hurricanes create higher wind loads, and wildfires encroach more unpredictably,” the authors wrote. “Investments in resilient infrastructure are consistently proven to be an effective use of limited public dollars, because they reduce costs in the long term, especially by minimizing rebuilding needs after a significant event.”
Advance policy and innovation
The ASCE said for the U.S. to raise each category to a state of good repair would cost an estimated $9.1 trillion, and improvements could save the average American family $700 a year.
The report’s authors said to get there, all levels of government should work to identify “pain points” in their permitting processes, address an engineering and construction workforce shortage, look for chances for the public and private sectors to collaborate, and leverage “proven and emerging technologies to make the best use of limited financial and personnel resources.”
The group’s next report is due in 2029, and to raise Americas infrastructure grades by then, the group “urges a comprehensive agenda that sustains investment, prioritizes resilience, and advances forward-thinking policies and innovations.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order shortly after he returned to office for a second term pausing funds from being disbursed from the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, but a judge ruled the following month that the Trump administration had to restore the funds as Congress had appropriated them.
“Support research and development of innovative materials, technologies, and processes to modernize and extend the life of infrastructure, expedite repairs or replacements, and reduce costs into the future,” authors of the ASCE infrastructure report recommended.
Apple Watch sales are enduring a years-long backslide.
While Apple first launched its watch in 2015, sales didnt spike until the pandemic, when consumers were highly focused on their health. But competitors quickly caught up, with fitness-focused companies like Garmin integrating more smart technology. Meanwhile, Apple stumbled in adding compelling new featuresgetting into some legal spats along the way.
For the past three years, Apple Watch sales have declined year-over-year, according to research firm IDC. In 2022, Apple sold 43 million units; by 2024, that number dropped to 34 million. The Apple Watch also lost market share, falling from 29.6% to 22.5%, while high-end competitor Garmin and budget alternatives like Huawei and Xiaomi gained ground. And although Apple doesnt break out revenue by individual product, its Wearables, Home and Accessories segment was the only one to decline year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Apple is in a weird spot, says Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at IDC studying wearables. They make great stuff but, at least on the watch side, things are a little bit iterative.
Where did the Apple Watch upgraders go?
Apple Watch sales have fallen far from their 2022 peak. While some analysts remain optimisticUbrani expects Apple will regain modest growth in 2025the numbers are still well below pandemic highs. Part of the drop, experts say, comes down to durability.
A lot of people bought a new smartwatch or replacement smartwatch during the pandemic, says Ben Hatton, analyst of connected devices for CCS. Those devices are yet to reach the point where they are beginning to be replaced. So there’s that longevity of device, especially for the top-end devices, that does hamper growth.
Unlike the iPhone, which users often upgrade for new features, the Apple Watch hasnt changed dramatically in recent years. Ubrani notes that the devices health and fitness sensors have remained largely consistent across generations. Youre not getting a whole new experience, apart from maybe a shiny new case, he says. (Apple did not respond to a request for comment.)
That could soon change. According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently testing watches with added cameras and Apple Intelligence. Ubrani says these updates could appeal to Apple loyalistsbut theyre already standard features among competitors.
If were talking AI, I think Apple is behind, and visual intelligence would be a part of that, he says. In terms of adding cameras, they wouldnt be the first one.
Who needs an Apple Watch these days?
Apple isnt the only company facing headwinds; the entire smartwatch industry has seen declining sales over the past three years, per IDC. But Apples competitors have weathered the downturn more gracefully. In 2023, when Apple Watch sales fell 15.8%, Googles declined just 4.3%. And while both are expected to return to growth in 2025, Googles projected 9.4% gain far outpaces Apples 4.9%.
Even in a shrinking market, Garmin is gaining ground. Though its share remains modest at about 5%, the company sold nearly two million more watches in 2024 than the previous year.
You’ve got a group of consumers that are looking to buy the best, top of the range fitness trackers, Hatton says. They may have gone into them through the Apple Watch or the Samsung Watch, but increasingly, they’re realizing that what they want it for is the pure fitness element. Garmin is probably best positioned to serve that demand.
The wearables category has also diversified. Watches once dominated the space, but now consumers can choose from smart rings that track sleep, headbands that boost focus, and AI-powered sunglasses. While these devices are still niche, Hatton says their rapid growth poses a longer-term threat. Apple sold an estimated 40 million watches last year; by contrast, only about 2 million smart rings were sold across all providers. If they continue to grow very quickly, then they may start to become a real challenger to watches, he contends.
And some consumers are simply over it. Maybe they grew tired of the endless notifications. Maybe they were shamed for wearing an Apple Watch at their wedding. Maybe they just missed the feel of a classic timepiece.
Theres been a resurgence of traditional watches, Ubrani says. People like the idea of having something thats a little less mass produced, something thats away from the mainstream.
As the federal government rolls back environmental programs and policies at a head-spinning pace, businesses are largely on their own to maintain momentum in fighting the climate crisis.
At the Fast Company Grill at SXSW earlier this month, Gene Eidelman, cofounder of Azure Printed Homes; Kate McLeod, cofounder and formulator at Kate McLeod; and Nicole Richards, CEO of Allonnia took the stage to discuss how they are tackling the environmental crisis through their own companies despite challenges at the federal level.For Richards, whose company focuses on cleaning up forever chemicals (PFAS), one of the prime issues is the lack of circularity in regulations. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the amount of PFAS in drinking water. But the Food and Drug Administration’s PFAS regulations only extend to packaging and processing equipment. So for a product like soda that’s primarily composed of water, there’s not enough oversight in the level of PFAFS in the actual product.
She also expressed concern over the lack of funding for companies in this space. “That’s the real worry,” she said. “Over the next four years, are we going to slow down innovation to a halt if we don’t have the right government support?”
Eidelman echoed Richards in calling for an overhaul in federal regulations pertaining to sustainability. Eidelman’s company builds 3D-printed homes from recycled materials for residential use or in disaster relief. So for him, he sees ample room for innovation within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “FEMA’s been buying the same trailers for every disaster and spends more money to ship it to Maui than to manufacture things on site,” Eidelman said. “There are a couple departments that are just not doing the job. Less of doing the same thing is going to be a good thing.”
McLeod called on companies to reframe how they think about sustainabilityif not for the environment itself, then as a way to stand out from competitors. At her eponymous company, McLeod creates body care items in plastic-free packaging that has resonated with consumers.
“I’m just really tired of these companies saying, oh, we’ll offset our plastic usage this way. Just don’t [use plastic in the first place],” she said. “It’s a little bit harder, but you know what? It’s going to make you so much cooler because you’ll be different.”
Watch the full panel below:
A few years ago, I was in the middle of an important client meeting when my phone started vibrating. Buzz. Buzz. Not wanting to be impolite, I kept my focus on my client. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Finally, I excused myself, peeked at my screen, and saw a string of texts from my son, increasing in urgency. The last few read simply: MOM. MOM. MOM.
As the mother of three teenage boys, I had gotten texts like these before. There was no way to know how badly my son needed me: Was he just locked out of the house? Or was this a true, red-alarm emergency?
In the end, he was fineno blood or broken bones, no panic attacks or thoughts of self-harm. But as a parent and caregivers, these are the moments that send your heart rate through the roof. In the conference room that day, I was in two places at once. And I felt like no one else could know.
That was the day I realized Id gotten something important wrong about parenting. When my boys became teens, I figured the hard part was over. But in fact, it was just beginning.
At exactly the moment our kids are going through some of the toughest years of their livesfacing bullying, pressures from social media and mental health challenges in record numbersbenefits and support programs for parents tend to disappear.
In place of paid parental leave, pamphlets on feeding and sleep training, and friends and colleagues asking how were doing (and how they can help!), we face an endless stream of advice that only reinforces the sense of shame that so many of us feel: Heres how to get your kid into a top college! Heres how to turn your angsty teen into a happy, healthy, successful adult!
Often implicit in all of this is possible judgment (or the feeling of being judged) that if our kids are struggling, its our fault. That with enough screen time monitoring and elbow grease, these challenges can be optimized away.
But parents dont need more advice. They need recognition and support.
In recent years, the U.S. has made great strides in acknowledging the importance of supporting new parents. Thanks to tireless advocacy, policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, and flexible schedules have gone from fringe family issues to core economic ones. Theyre discussed on presidential debate stages, integral to competitive benefit packages, and a key part of any serious conversation about the cost of living.
The data on the economic impact of raising healthy kids in psychologically safe, loving environmentsand giving parents and caregivers the tools they need to do thisis undeniable. And research has shown employers with strong policies can see the positive impact on their businesses firsthand, in the form of improved employee productivity, better recruitment and stronger retention.
Of course, were nowhere near where we need to be; paid leave and affordable childcare remain inaccessible to too many. But we have changed the conversation around how we acknowledge, value and support parents of young kidsand with it, the lives of millions of people.
Now its time we did the same for all parents and caregiversfinding new and better ways to support people whose sleepless nights dont involve changing diapers but, instead, comforting a teen who may be suffering from depression or anxiety.
Solutions wont look the same as they do for new parents, and if history is any guide, public-sector reform is a long way off. But the first step toward meaningful change is to explore ideas that have a good track record in other contexts and a high likelihood of success. This is where business leaders can lead the way.
We can start by recognizing that parents of kids at any age are still, and forever, parents. We can offer schedule flexibility for caregivers of all types. Robust coverage for mental health treatment. Family leave that includes caring for teens in crisis. Tools for team leaders. And resource groups for parents and caregivers of adolescents. Small changes, like explicitly and proactively stating that caregiver leave can be taken to help a child going through a mental health crisis, can go a long way.
Beyond corporate policies and benefits, supporting parents and caregivers of teens means building a culture of genuine interpersonal support and understanding, where employees feel welcome and included. You dont need a handbook to do that: No matter where you sit, you can be part of that change today.
I wonder what would have happened around that conference table if, instead of reacting with embarrassment and trying to split my brain in two, I had simply told my client that my teen was in distress and needed me. It might have created a moment of connection and understanding. It might have made my client think about their own experiences, or that of parents on their teams.
By normalizing these conversations and supporting caregivers all the way through their journey, we can make a lasting difference for kids and familiesand for businesses and society along with them.
After all these years, Napster is apparently worth $207 million.
That’s how much artificial intelligence and extended reality company Infinite Reality purchased the former file-sharing service for on Tuesday. Under its new ownership, Infinite Reality said Napster will become a virtual concert venue that sells physical and virtual merchandise to musicians’ super fans and is capable of hosting social listening parties and gamifying fan engagement and loyalty.
“By acquiring Napster, were paving a path to a brighter future for artists, fans, and the music industry at large,” Infinite Reality CEO John Acunto said in a statement. “This strategic move aligns with Infinite Realitys vision to lead an internet industry shift from a flat 2D clickable web to a 3D conversational onegiving all creators modern tools to better engage, monetize, and measure their audiences.”
[Image: Infinite Reality]
Napster on repeat
The bet is the Napster brand has some life left in it still, but the new owners face a challenge. The recent history of Napster shows it’s hard to buy an old brand for parts and transfer its nostalgic goodwill to a new but related service.
When Napster operated in its original form from 1999 to 2001, it was a peer-to-peer platform that offered users free, though illegal, access to music online (not to mention computer viruses). It served as a precursor and catalyst for the music industry’s switch from physical music formats to digital downloads and streaming, and Napster’s new owners hope it will again lead the way to a new era for popular music
“Napster revolutionized digital music in the ’90s and now, with Infinite Reality, were ready to do it again,” said Jon Vlassopulos, Napster’s CEO and the former global head of music at Roblox. “The internet has evolved from desktop to mobile, from mobile to social, and now we are entering the immersive era. Yet, music streaming has remained largely the same. Its time to reimagine whats possible.”
The plans for the reimagined Napster mirror those of other companies seeking to bridge music, VR, and super fans. Meta has hosted virtual concerts by artists including Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter, Fortnite has sold special-edition skins, or virtual outfits, that match what artists like Ariana Grande and Travis Scott wore during their in-game concerts, and Spotify is considering a “Super-Premium” subscription tier for fans to pay for access to perks like early releases and exclusive deluxe editions of albums.
If Infinite Reality has its way, the new Napster could be all of that and more, save for two big problems. The metaverse turned out to be a failure, and many before have tried and failed to attach the Napster name to a new music-based service.
Zombie branding at its finest
Functionally, Napster has become a music streaming platform, though far less popular than category leaders like Spotify and Apple Music. Napster’s assets have been previously owned by companies that tried merging it with the online music services Pressplay and later Rhapsody, and it was even owned by Best Buy from 2008 to 2011. Since 2020, Napster has changed hands between the virtual reality concert app MelodyVR to an investment group that bought it in 2022 and said it would “revolutionize the music industry by bringing blockchain and Web3 to artists and fans,” to its current owner today.
Other turn-of-the-century tech brands have similarly bounced around owners and pivoted to new technologies, like the peer-to-peer file-sharing service LimeWire, which got into AI music generation. MySpace morphed from an early social network to a music-focused site once owned by Fox News parent company News Corporation.
For its part, Napster is a zombie brand that’s still widely recognized but worth far less than during its Y2K-era heyday, and it’s seemingly resistant to being repurposed. Music is so tied to youth cultureand today’s youngest listeners are too young to even remember Napster. Plus, its recent history has shown you can’t just buy its brand assets and wear them like a skin.
Napster once revolutionized music and technology, but whether its brand name and assets alone can still inspire that same sense of being on popular music’s cutting edge a quarter of a century later seems unlikely.
Nearly 30 million Americans annually are impacted by water scarcity and don’t have reliable access to clean water. The water crisis stems from a wide range of issues, ranging from extreme weather events like hurricanes and flooding to depleted aquifers and overuse of wells. Our aging water infrastructure alone leaks 6 billion gallons per day, while pipe failures lead to nearly 10,000 boil water notices every year.
Water is an essential and increasingly limited resource. It shapes where we live (or dont). Vast lands across America remain undeveloped due to a lack of natural water resources, exacerbating the housing crisis. Water increasingly restrains and defines how we live.
These crises expose a fundamental flaw in our water infrastructure: Its centralized, fragile, and slow to adapt. For centuries, weve relied on massive, fixed water systemsmunicipal plants, aquifers, and reservoirsassuming theyd always be enough. But droughts, disasters, and rising demand are pushing these systems to the brink. Neither resilient nor quite renewable, the problem isnt just scarcityits rigidity.
Energy faced a similar challenge. Grids dependent on fossil-fueled centralized plants proved vulnerable to extreme weather and surging demand, while adding to pollution and climate change. The solution? Resilient and renewable eistributed energy resources (DERs)solar panels, batteries, and microgrids that gave homes and businesses power independence.
What if water worked the same way? What if atmospheric water generation (AWG), smart storage, and rainwater harvesting built a new paradigm of distributed water resources (DWRs)? This would make water supply resilient, renewable, and independent. Just as DERs revolutionized energy, distributed water will redefine water.
The crucial foundation of DWRs is a renewable water source like rainwater collection and atmospheric water generationproducing clean water directly from the air. While the concept isnt newthe U.S. military has explored it since the 1930searly technologies were energy-intensive, expensive, and impractical for widespread use. Until now, atmospheric water was limited to niche applications.
But today, technological advancements have changed the game. Large-scale atmospheric water capture is a reality, and when integrated with storage, entire homes and communities can be sustained with water sourced directly from the air, feeding into showers, kitchens, and more. (One of our companies, Brian Sheng’s Aquaria, builds and sells AWG systems.)
This is a water equivalent to a renewable microgridthe hydrogridand its already here. In Texas, rural homeowners have implemented a DWR model themselves, standing up rainwater systems, AWGs and water storage, and unplugging from their failing wells. In Hawaii, a developer is building a pioneering residential community integrating a hydrogrid with a rainwater harvesting system to secure a year-round independent water supply. No need to further stressor rely onoverstressed terrestrial water sources and infrastructure.
An Aquaria Hydropack unit is integrated with a rainwater catchment system in this off-the-grid home in Hill Country, Texas. [Photo: Aquaria]
Big water infrastructure cant close the supply-and-demand gap quickly
At the Texas Water Day at the Texas Capital in March, water advocates shared that it costs about $2 million to build one mile of new municipal-type water pipepipes that only have about a 35-year life! As we expand our urban centers with new suburbs and exurbs, theres no easy path to finance urgently needed new water systems to support growth.
Like the energy grid, our water infrastructure is fragmented. A recent McKinsey report on water resilience found that of the nations nearly 50,000 water systems, 91% service small communities of under 10,000 people. Its hard to imagine how these small-scale, rural systems will be able to afford the considerable costs associated with upgrading and maintaining water pipes. As McKinsey sees it, the overall infrastructure funding gap for water utilities in the U.S. could reach $194 billion by 2030.
An Aquaria water generator and tank installed at a South Texas home supplements its water supply during drought conditions. [Photo: Aquaria]
DWRs are the resilient solution that humanity needs
Rural communities highlight why a DWR model is the most reliable, resilient, and adaptable approach to water infrastructure. Traditional hub-and-spoke systems are prone to pipeline failures, contamination, and supply disruptions, leaving entire communities without water or forcing them to live with boil water notices.
By pairing localized rainwater collection and atmospheric water generation with storage, communities can remain self-sufficient and resilientproducing, storing, and using water on demand, reducing reliance on distant water. The amount of water in the air at any given time is about 3,100 cubic miles. This stays consistent and regenerates every week or so through natural cycles of precipitation and evaporation. This quantity is about 200 times more than humans consume annually. Water in the air is not only abundant, it is limitless.
A homeowner can install an AWG and storage tank starting at around $20,000comparable to the average cost of a residential solar installation. Installation is straightforward, requiring only a connection to the homes water system and can typically be completed within a week. Residential rainwater systems range from humble rain barrels to large-scale systems with 50,000-gallon tanks to maximize collection during the season, plus water treatment, sensors, and even predictive modeling to manage use.
Scaling rainwater harvesting and AWGs for community-level water generation is equally practical. These AWG systems are housed in containerized units, similar to container battery storage systems, making them highly modular and deployable within days. A sinle unit can produce thousands of gallons of clean water per day, and multiple units can be deployed in parallel or distributed to different locations based on demand.
Aquarias Hydropack X unit, installed with a storage tank for backup water supply thats needed due to unreliable piped water supply in Austin [Photo: Aquaria]
Envisioning a new future for water
In an ever-changing world, the time to secure water independence is now. Homeowners can install DWR systems into their homes to secure personal water supplies, while local, state, and federal governments can implement these systems at scale to protect their communities amid disaster and climate change, while protecting terrestrial water sources with renewable water.
DWRs also enable new development opportunities. Land once considered unbuildable due to lack of infrastructure can now support housing, agriculture, and industry without costly municipal expansion.
Imagine if we unlock a new way to harvest and deliver abundant water wherever its needed. A new model of distributed water resources can unveil a radical range of new possibilities in the same way that distributed energy resources diddelivering reliability, flexibility, sustainability, and independence in an uncertain future.
The world is experiencing a growing and urgent water crisis. As Niccol Machiavelli once said, “Never waste the opportunity offered by a good crisis.” World Water Day has now come and gone, but we must continue to acknowledge the state of the water crisis and recognize the urgency of strategic, communal action. We live in an era of both rapid technological advancement and accelerating water scarcityand now is the time to bridge the gap.
