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Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death, and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by then husband Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.At the height of a cinema career that spanned more than two dozen films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars, even as she struggled with depression.Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and coins.“We are mourning a legend,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post.Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals. She also condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments, and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition. Turn to the far right Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely, intelligent man.”In 2012, she supported the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical,” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts.She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.” Privileged but ‘difficult’ upbringing Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14.Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said that her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.Vadim, a French movie produce who she married in 1952, saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.The film, which portrayed Bardot as a teen who marries to escape an orphanage and then beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent.“It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant media attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken into her house two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor who she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father, and later said she had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother.“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.”In her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, and they divorced three years later.Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.” As fans brought flowers to her home Sunday, the local St. Tropez administration called for “respect for the privacy of her family and the serenity of the places where she lived.” Middle-aged reinvention She emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist, her face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.Depression sometimes dogged her, and she said that she attempted suicide again on her 49th birthday.Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves.“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter,In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.Environmental campaigner Paul Watson, who was beaten on a seal hunt protest in Canada alongside Bardot in 1977 and campaigned with her for five decades, acknowledged that “many disagreed with Brigitte’s politics or some of her views.”“Her allegiance was not to the world of humans,” he said. “The animals of this world lost a wonderful friend today.”Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.“I can understand hunted animals, because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.” Elaine Ganley provided reporting for this story before her retirement. Angela Charlton contributed to this report. Thomas Adamson and Elaine Ganley, Associated Press
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A potent winter storm threatened blizzard-like conditions, treacherous travel, and power outages in parts of the Upper Midwest as other areas of the country braced Monday for plunging temperatures, strong winds, and a mix of snow, ice, and rain.The snow and strengthening winds began spreading Sunday across the northern Plains, where the National Weather Service warned of whiteout conditions and possible blizzard conditions that could make travel impossible in some areas. Snowfall totals were expected to exceed a foot (30 centimeters) across parts of the upper Great Lakes and as much as double that along the south shore of Lake Superior.“Part of the storm system is getting heavy snow, other parts of the storm along the cold front are getting higher winds and much colder temperatures as the front passes,” said Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service office in College Park, Maryland. “They’re all related to each other different parts of the country will be receiving different effects from this storm.”The weather service warned of “dangerous wind chills” as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34.4 degrees Celsius) in North Dakota and into Minnesota from Sunday night into Monday.In the South, meteorologists warned severe thunderstorms are likely to signal the arrival of a sharp cold front bringing a sudden drop in temperatures and strong north winds that will abruptly end days of record warmth throughout that region.The high temperature in Atlanta was around 72 F (22 C) on Sunday, continuing a warming trend after climbing to 78 F (about 26 C) to shatter the city’s record high temperature for Christmas Eve, the National Weather Service said. Numerous other record high temperatures were seen across the South and Midwest on the days after Christmas.But the incoming cold front was expected to drop rain on much of the South late Sunday night into Monday, and a big drop in temperatures Tuesday. Forecasters said the low temperature in Atlanta to 25 F (minus 3.9 C) by early Tuesday morning. The colder temperatures in the South are expected to persist through New Year’s Day.In Dallas, Sunday temperatures in the lower 80s (upper 20s C) could drop down to the mid 40s (single digits Celsius). In Little Rock, high temperatures of around 70 (21 C) on Sunday could drop down to highs in the mid-30s on Monday.“We’re definitely going back towards a more winter pattern,” Oravec said.The storm is expected to intensify as it moves east, drawing energy from a sharp clash between frigid air plunging south from Canada and unusually warm air that has lingered across the southern United States, according to the National Weather Service. Leah Willingham and Jeff Martin, Associated Press
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Construction materials are responsible for nearly one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions. And as global demand for construction continues to rise (it has already tripled over the past 25 years), its emissions are bound to climb even higher.eIn fact, some, like environmental engineer and University of Virginia professor Andres Clarens, see materials potential negative impact as so existential that he calls them the last major frontier in the fight against climate change. If thats the case, we need to reduce the emissions associated with commonly used building materials like cement and steeland we need to develop alternative materials that emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions by default. And we need to do it fast.This year, material designers delivered. Some of these new materials are still in the testing phase, others are already on the market. All five have tremendous potential to make our buildings more sustainable.[Photo: RMIT University]1. A superstrong material inspired by the deep-sea spongeEarlier this year, researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology invented a bio-inspired building material that is both lightweight and resilient under pressure, which could help reduce the use of steel and concrete. The key to their innovation? A little creature that lives thousands of meters deep in the ocean.The deep-sea sponges lattice-like skeleton, which has been optimized over millions of years, can absorb force while maintaining its strength. According to the researchers, a similarly designed material could enable thinner load-bearing walls and slimmer columns, which in turn, would reduce the amount of steel and concrete required to achieve structural integrity.The material is still in the testing phase.[Photos: InventWood]2. A Superwood that is stronger than steelSeven years ago, scientists at the University of Maryland said they discovered a way to make wood so strong that it could compete with steel. This year, their research culminated in the launch of Superwood, a material that has 50% greater tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio thats 10 times better.Superwood was developed by a spin-off startup called InventWood, which began mass-producing the material this summer. The companys first facility in Frederick, Maryland, can produce one million square feet of Superwood per year, with applications varying from interior finishes to exterior-grade panels for siding and roofing.The plan, according to InventWood cofounder Alex Lau, is to build a larger facility that will scale to over 30 million square feet, enabling use in infrastructure and large developments.[Image: Carbon Smart Wood]3. A cross-laminated timber made of fallen treesBy some estimates, cities lose a staggering 36 million trees a year to storms, insects, and disease. Over the past six years, the Washington, D.C.-based startup Carbon Cambium has salvaged six million board feet of wood from these fallen trees, diverting it from the landfill, and turning it into usable timber for furniture with companies like Room & Board and Sabai.This year, the startup developed its first product for the construction industry. Carbon Smart Wood is the first cross-laminated timber (CLT) made from salvaged trees, which promises to make mass timber construction even more sustainable.The company offers millwork like decking and flooring, and full CLT structural panels for buildings. Forty thousand linear feet of the material will appear on the facade of the new JFK Airport expansion in 2026.a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91453541/architects-embracing-rammed-earth-designs">Horizon House [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato]4. A new take on rammed earthRammed earth, a building technique where damp soil is compacted in layers within temporary forms, has propped up buildings for millennia. This year, the humble material got an upgrade when researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology encased it in a cardboard tube.The resulting material, dubbed cardboard-confined rammed earth (CCRE), consists of rammed earth thats been compacted inside cylindrical tubes. Typically, rammed earth walls also include a dose of cement to improve strength and durability, but the cardboard formwork in CCRE acts as a shell, negating the need for cement. The researchers say the cardboard helps protect the rammed earth from surrounding environments, while additional treatment on the cardboard can extend its life as well. They have also developed a similar version using carbon-fiber tubes.To date, the team has built a small-scale prototype, but if scaled, the material could be used to build low-rise and modular buildings with no cement.[Image: courtesy Joe Doucet and Partners]5. A paint that changes colors with the seasonsWeve known for a while now that painting surfaces like streets and roofs in white can make them cooler because white reflects heatand painting them black can make them warmer because black absorbs heat.This year, industrial designer Joe Doucet took this time-tested innovation to a new level by developing a climate-adaptive paint that can change colors based on the outside temperature. The paint, which can be mixed with other tints (so you can still have your yellow house) could save an estimated 2030% in energy costs every year. Doucets team is currently testing the final formula, with the goal of licensing it to paint manufacturers when ready.
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Throughout 2025, weve watched companies treat employees with a stunning disregard: rolling layoffs (with thousands let go at a time), unchecked workloads, turning a blind eye to burnoutwith 76% of U.S. workers reporting at least one health condition todayand a near-gleeful rush to replace people with AI. Over 200,000 American women quit their jobs this year, many citing inflexible policies and lack of support for balancing work and life. Relentless rounds of cuts have destabilized employee trust and left employees uncertain and questioning leadership at every level. Across industries, leaders have routinely prioritized short-term efficiency over human impacts, sending a clear signal that employee well-being is treated as irrelevant to how most CEOs define organizational success. Despite a year in which many companies acted as if they were actively anti employee well-being, theres clear evidence that 2026 will be the year everything changes. This isnt wishful thinking or naivete. Its grounded in hard business realities that CEOs can no longer afford to ignore. First, investorsthe same ones who have historically applauded employee layoffsare beginning to reward companies that prioritize employee flourishing because multiple years of research show that firms with high well-being scores consistently outperform peers in stock performance, profitability, and innovation. Second, the talent market is unforgivingtop performers now demand workplaces that offer trust, growth, and the conditions to thrive; ignoring this risks losing the very people who drive competitive advantage. Additionally, weve reached a point of destabilizationa crisiswhere people are hitting a no more moment and simply wont continue in the old way any longer. This will be a major catalyst for change. Third, the AI-driven transformation of work depends on human adaptability; organizations that fail to foster well-being, learning, and resilience will sabotage their own investments in technology. Finally, the reputational and financial costs of ignoring well-being are increasingly visible, from mass departures of key employees to heightened public scrutiny. Taken together, these forces create a perfect storm: 2026 is the year CEOs will have both the incentive and the imperative to finally make employee well-being a central strategic priority. The Reckoning Arrives If 2025 will be remembered for the callousness and disregard organizations showed their people, 2026 will be remembered as the year CEOs felt the consequences of those decisions and were forced to pivot. And this shift wont happen because leaders suddenly became more empathetic. It will happen because the data is now unequivocal: employee well-being isnt a soft ideaits a hard, proven driver of performance, retention, customer experience, innovation, and long-term value creation. When people feel genuinely valued, respected, supported, treated humanely, and that they truly belong, they dont just perform more optimallythey think more clearly, solve problems more creatively, and bring far greater energy and commitment to their work. Research from leading business schools and global workplace studies demonstrates this; 2026 is simply the year the evidence becomes impossible for CEOs to dismiss. The Well-BeingPerformance Link Is No Longer Debatable For years, employee well-being was treated as a feel-good afterthoughtsomething leaders knew mattered but never put on the same level as profits and shareholder returns. That era is over. Rigorous, multiyear research from investment firm Irrational Capitalanalyzing thousands of public companies, including the entire S&P 500 and Russell 1000shows that organizations in the top 20% for employee well-being have outperformed the market by hundreds of basis points. Oxford research finds that a single-point increase in employee happiness correlates with billions in additional annual profit for large enterprises. McKinsey on burnout, Deloitte on retention, Gallups global workplace dataall of it points to the same conclusion: when people feel genuinely supported, productivity, profitability, innovation, and customer loyalty surge. Harvard leadership professor Arthur C. Brooks puts it bluntly: Happier employees are more profitable, more productive employees. Thats just the way it is. Investors are now baking these realities into their models. The gap between human flourishing and financial flourishing isnt philosophical anymoreits mathematical. Where Companies Have Gone Wrong Most organizations spent the past decade conflating well-being with wellness programs. They handed out meditation apps, gym stipends, and yoga classes while ignoring the root causes of poor well-being: uncaring and untrustworthy managers, a lack of connection and belonging, expectations of always being onand feeling unappreciated for ones hard work. The result was predictableburnout soared, engagement flat-lined, and the best people walked away. The damage is undeniable in 2025s data. Trust in senior leadership has fallen to its lowest point in years. Employees are using words like disconnect, misalignment, distrust, and hypocrisy in record numbers. The power shift back to employers has been used to push return-to-office mandates, endless restructurings, and the forever layoffsmall, rolling terminations that keep everyone fearing theyll be next, exhausted, and diminished in what they can contribute. Why 2026 Changes Everything 2025 exposed the cost of treating people as expendble. 2026 will reveal the cost of continuing to do so. The forces now converging leave CEOs no room to hide: Investors have begun rewarding cultures of genuine care. The same financial logic that once justified layoffs now proves that sustained well-being creates superior performance. Boards are asking hard questions about turnover, culture risk, and the long-term sustainability of workforce models built on burnout. The cost of neglect is now impossible to hide. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that workplaces are a major driver of the nations mental health crisis. The result is spiking turnover, steep drops in productivity, skyrocketing medical claims, and a workforce whose resilience has been systematically erodedlosses that dwarf the cost of actually supporting people. Young talent is reshaping the expectations of work. Gen Z and millennials, who will soon be the majority of the workforce, refuse to accept fear, overwork, or indifference as normal. They demand growth, stability, and humane leadershipand they walk quickly when they dont get it. The mistake leaders continue to make is by framing this attitude as entitlement. Its not. Its clarity. Younger generations simply refuse to tolerate what older generations accepted as normal. The battle for talent has become a battle for well-being. AI is acceleratingnot reducingthe need for well-being. The belief that technology could replace people and eliminate the need for authentically supportive leadership has been proven wrong. AI demands adaptability, creativity, emotional intelligence, and resiliencecapacities that collapse under chronic stress. Organizations that want their people to master the tools of the future must first keep them energized and trusted today. A new leadership mandate is forming. This is the shift Deloitte calls human sustainability: the deliberate choice to build organizations where people can thrive for the long haul, not just survive to the next quarter. It means embedding respect, growth, and genuine care into every systemhiring, development, compensation, communication, and even the way difficult decisions are handled. Most importantly, well-being must become a leadership competency. Leaders must learn the importance of trust, how team cohesion gets built, how psychological safety is created, how meaningful work is designed, and how human energy is sustained. Leaders must embrace new practices known to support human thriving. The companies that make this pivot in 2026 wont just repair the damage of 2025. Theyll dominate the decade. Theyll keep their best people and attract everyone elses. Theyll turn AI from a source of fear into the greatest amplifier of human potential weve ever seen. Theyll build resilience that no disruption can break. In my new book, The Power of Employee Well-Being, I lay out exactly how this transformation happens and why its the single greatest untapped performance lever left in most organizations. The evidence is settled. The investors are watching. The talent is voting with their feet. And 2026 is the year the old excuses finally die. Leaders who still treat people as costs to be managed will be left behind. The rest of us will be building the futureand its one where people are flourishing, trusted, and bringing everything they have to work every single day. Happy New Year!
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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. Last December, Modern CEO named the inaugural Modern CEO of the Year. The goal was to recognize a business leader who embodied the traits frequently covered in this newsletter: inclusion, accessibility, humility, and innovation amid unprecedented uncertainty. We looked for a person with vision and grit, someone who is growing a company sustainably. The methodology isnt scientific, but this year, one name stood out: Flexs Revathi Advaithi. Meet the Modern CEO of the Year Advaithi didnt set out to ride the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. After becoming CEO of Flex (formerly known as Flextronics) in 2019, she zeroed in on the contract manufacturing companys power-focused business, which makes components that manage, regulate, and distribute power for advanced semiconductors and systems. Advaithi understood that business segment well from her years working at Eaton, the power management company. She bet that technology companies would continue to need more power and computethe processing power and other resources needed to run applicationsplus systems to cool equipment to keep it from overheating. She quietly began to build a portfolio of products and services to design, manage, and deploy power, compute, and cooling infrastructure. Today, that business is growing 35% year-over-year, and Advaithi expects it to generate about $6.5 billion of Flexs fiscal 2026 annual revenue, projected to reach $26.7 billion to $27.3 billion. As Modern CEO went to press, Flex stock was up 65%, outperforming the broader market and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index. Either we were very smart, or we got lucky, Advaithi says. But when [generative] AI emerges and people start talking about power-hungry compute, the strategy we put together looks like its a winning strategy. Strategic leadership, personal adversity Advaithi is quick to point out that her remaking of the power portfolio was part of a strategic approach she applied to all parts of Flexs business, which includes supply-chain management and manufacturing of components for electronics and automobile makers and the healthcare industry. Indeed, Flex did more than simply capitalize on AI in 2025. This year, the company also helped its clients figure out strategies for dealing with new tariffs. And Advaithi led the company while undergoing treatment for breast cancer for part of the year. Shes currently in remission. Advaithi says her board of directors supported her decision to keep working after she was diagnosed with cancer in August 2024 even though intense chemotherapy would mean missing travel and interactions with employees and customers. But Advaithi says shes never been a 24/7 CEO and has always made time for family, friends, and activities, so she felt confident that the company could thrive without her being constantly on call. For Advaithi, the decision was affirming. Having that purpose, keeping myself grounded, having something to push myself out of bed, kept me going in a pretty significant way, she says. She also says she wanted to show the business world and other patients that those undergoing treatment, especially women, were capable of reliance and strength. I felt like I had a duty and obligation to show that it could be done, she says, acknowledging the support of her family and the ability to access high-quality care. A guide for uncertain times With manufacturing facilities in 30 countries, Flex this year found itself consulting with clients on how best to navigate the new tariffs announced by the Trump administration at the start of the year. Using sophisticated software that analyzed everything from labor costs to rare-earth mining risks, Flex offered customers different options to make and deliver goods as well as develop longer-term manufacturing and supply chain strategies. That dispassionate, disciplined approach is not unlike the way Advaithi is thinking about the AI growth opportunity, which many now feel is approaching bubble territory. Rather than building her business around speculation about investment needed to support AI hyper-scalers, Advaithi says shes focused on the power needs of data centers that have already been announced for 2026. The constant decision that CEOs have to make today is looking at growth, risk-taking, and discipline, she says. Ive only worked with industrial companies, so I feel like you have to [ask]: Where are you five years from now? Where are you 10 years from now? And have you built a business thats viable and sustainable? More Modern CEOs Who would have been your pick for Modern CEO of the Year, and why? Send your submissions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and well highlight readers choices in an upcoming newsletter. Read more: top CEOs YouTubes Neal Mohan is Times CEO of the Year Barrons 2025 Top CEOs Inc.s 2025 Business Leaders of the Year
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