Virginia Women in Leadership Awards 2025

We’ve written about glass ceilings and glass cliffs, but to quote the Beatles, let’s look through the glass onion. What’s the glass onion? Well, it’s a metaphor I’m using to describe the multilayered challenges facing women who aspire to be CEOs. The good news is, there are more female CEOs than in years before, including […]

China’s 996 model — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — was sold as a path to speed, discipline, and dominance. In reality, it became a case study in how overwork corrodes the very foundation of business success. People can push themselves for a while, but there’s a ceiling. Past a certain […]

Perhaps the greatest symbol of tech companies’ uncanny valley visions for the AI-powered future are dark factories — also called lights-out factories, these AI-managed manufacturing plants are so fully automated that machines perform their work in full or near darkness 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without breaks — and largely without humans. […]

Honestly, this job would be a breeze if it weren’t for the people part.” A regional sales director said that after recounting missed targets, two resignations and a turf war between product and marketing. The room laughed — tired laughter, the kind that comes when you recognize a hard truth. Plans obey Gantt charts; people […]

I appreciate your column in the July issue of Virginia Business on the value of immigrants (“Your friends and neighbors”).  I’ve been sounding the benefits of immigrants for years since working in the nonprofit sector helping immigrants and refugees in the 1990s. In addition to the factors and data you cite, I find it also […]