President Donald Trump is approaching the milestone of his first 100 days in office. These past four months have been heaped with policy making and its attendant controversy. On Tuesday, for example, the Washington Post reported that the White House was changing course on a child care policy Trump announced on the campaign trail, in response to criticism that his plan was only a boon to families who could already afford costly care. Some of those critics were in the audience of the Women20 Summit when Trump’s daughter Ivanka made a panel appearance in her capacity as adviser to the president. Some attendees booed and hissed when she claimed her father was a tremendous supporter of families and empowering women, but she offered no federal policies to back it up.

So what does the administration have to show for its first 100 days in service to women and families across the U.S.?

Wage Gap

Earlier this month, Equal Pay Day reminded us that the wage gap still exists, and even though closing it could add trillions to the U.S. economy, it’s going to take at least 42 years to get there. Or more, depending on whether or not the White House enacts legislation.

In an executive order signed on March 27, Trump revoked the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order. It was originally put in place by former president Barack Obama and mandated that companies with federal contracts provide employees with basic information about their pay, including hours worked, overtime earnings, and any pay deductions. This is of particular importance to women who are more likely to work in hourly jobs.

Obama had also put forth a proposal that any company with more than 100 employees had to report their staff’s pay broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Salary transparency is a strategy that some companies have used to try to eliminate the gender wage gap. The reporting date has been moved from September 2017 to March 2018. However, with the appointment of EEOC commissioner Victoria A. Lipnic as acting chair, the reporting may never come to pass, as she’s voted against the EEO-1 pay data, as have other Trump appointees.

Paid Leave

As a candidate, Trump proposed six weeks of paid leave for birth mothers whose employers didn’t offer a benefit. Since then, he told a joint session of Congress that he wanted new parents to have access to paid family leave, but hasn’t offered a proposal. Instead, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced the Family Act to Congress that proposes that a nationwide insurance program be created to offer up to 12 weeks of leave for family and medical purposes with partial pay to workers of any gender.

Child Care

We’ve reported on how both Trump’s family leave and child care proposals were fundamentally flawed. He is now proposing to expand the existing Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) rather than allowing families to deduct the average cost of child care from their income taxes. As Tracy Sturdivant, cofounder and co-executive director of the advocacy group Make It Work, points out, this is still not enough for middle- and low-income families. “For the typical working family, child care costs $10,000 to $20,000 a year, which can amount to nearly 30% of a family’s income in the United States,” she told Fast Company in a statement. “Most families have to pay their child care provider weekly or monthly, meaning they cannot wait to be reimbursed for costs they must pay up front,” Sturdivant added.

She also noted that the previewed plan includes tax exemptions in the form of savings accounts. “Families who are struggling to simply pay their rent and health care costs won’t be able to put thousands of dollars into savings accounts to cover child care expenses,” she said. “This is in part because low-income families generally have less than two weeks’ income in their savings and checking accounts, and most families don’t have a lot of cash on hand.”

Trump also talked a lot about empowering the U.S. Armed Forces, and his 2018 budget allocates $54 billion to the Department of Defense and other national defense programs. However, a federal civilian hiring freeze will affect some military personnel who rely on hourly care for their children. “The Army is dealing with a child care backlog of over 5,500 children, which senior leaders worry could affect the readiness of military parents,” according to Military.com.

Other Support For Families

H.R.1180, the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017, would give workers the ability to take time off instead of collecting pay for any overtime hours they’ve put in. In theory, it sounds like it could be an even exchange, and something workers who are also family caregivers can use in lieu of the fact that there is no federally mandated paid time off.

However, the Economic Policy Institute’s policy director Heidi Shierholz says that overtime provisions are already part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. “The bill only provides a new employer the right to avoid paying workers the overtime they have earned,” she writes, and “adds nothing for workers but delay and risk.”

Women’s Involvement In The Administration

The Center for American Progress senior fellow Jocelyn Frye notes that the president’s cabinet is the least diverse in decades, and public reports reveal that men have outnumbered women by three to one in his early appointments. “Even though women are among his senior advisers, the policies put forward thus far have undermined women’s progress and risk eroding hard-won gains,” she tells Fast Company.

For example, after appointing Nikki Haley as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he immediately began preparing orders to reduce the U.S.’s involvement in the organization. (At a lunch at the White House on April 24, Trump jokingly asked the ambassadors present: “Does everybody like Nikki? Otherwise, she can easily be replaced.”)

Frye points to a lack of policies that support women and states:

This is not the record of a champion for women.  Rather, it is a record that is woefully out of touch with the diverse challenges that women face and the solutions that can make a difference. Moreover, it stands in stark contrast to what women’s empowerment should mean to make a meaningful difference in women’s lives. Empowering women requires comprehensive policy solutions that put power in women’s hands to make the decisions that make sense for them. It also means eliminating obstacles that disadvantage women and limit their opportunities. This administration has fallen far short of this measure.

In the mid-1980s, my mom, then six months pregnant with me, emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York City’s Lower East Side. Once she gave birth, the two of us crashed on my aunt’s couch in a tenement on Rivington Street for a year, at which point an apartment opened up across the hall.

Our building didn’t have working lights in the hallways, but there were candles to help direct the addicts, there to buy heroin, who I’d walk by each morning. My mother worked at a clothing factory making less than a dollar an hour, and I’d hide under her sewing machine because she had no one to take care of me. I wanted more. When people asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?,” I told them I wanted to be rich.

My dream came true. At 12, I started dealing drugs. By 19, I’d inherited the street corner of Broome and Eldridge. Four years later, business was booming. I had more than 20 people working for me, and I was bringing in more than $2 million a year running one of the largest drug delivery services in New York City. I had seven flip phones (it was 2013), each maxed out with 1,500 contacts.

But, by the time I was 23, federal agents caught up to me, and I was sentenced to seven years in prison.

I spent a year at Rikers Island before moving to a prison upstate. I had a lot of time to sit with myself and get my life together, starting with my health and fitness. And, when I got out, I founded ConBody, a venture-backed “prison-style” fitness bootcamp based on the same corner where I used to deal. We are now on ClassPass, have a large, sometimes-elite following (past clients include Google executives and Larry David), and are opening a second location at Saks Fifth Avenue, ConBody Midtown, where we’ll also sell apparel, this May. As you can imagine, it’s been a hell of a journey for me to get to this point. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

Related:When The Gap In Your Resume Is Time Spent In Prison

1. Inspiration Can Come From Unlikely Places

When I was in prison, I found out that I had a lot of health issues, including cholesterol levels that could kill me. The doctors told me I had five years to live if I didn’t shape up, starting with losing about 70 pounds. Given the impossibility of maintaining a healthy diet in prison, I began working out in my cell and running in the yard. People called me “fat Forrest Gump,” but I didn’t pay any attention to it. I just kept moving. I was losing fat and gaining muscle—and the other inmates noticed. From there, I realized I could help other inmates get in shape, and I had an idea for a new kind of hustle. I assembled a running group and ended up helping about 20 inmates lose a collective 1,000 pounds. Near the end of my incarceration, I started thinking about creating a business plan around my experience.

2. You Need A Higher Purpose

With two months left in my prison term—and a promise to my son that I would be home very soon—I had a run-in with an officer. A judge added a year to my sentence. I was devastated. All I had was paper, a pen, an envelope, and a Bible. I wrote a 10-page letter in which I broke the news to my family, only to realize I didn’t have a stamp. A week later, my sister wrote, telling me to read Psalm 91. As soon as I opened up to it, a stamp fell out of my Bible.

That sent literal chills down my body, and suddenly, all that “Coss the Boss” thinking went out the window in favor of respecting a higher power. I began praying and asking, “How can I get back to—and give back to—society?” I thought about how I was already helping inmates with their fitness, and decided to start a prison-style bootcamp that employed the formerly incarcerated.

Other inmates told me I was crazy and that it would never work. I didn’t care. I’d been in and out of jail before, so I had already felt the pain of reentering, being unable to find a job, and reverting back to the streets. I didn’t want that to happen to others once they finally got out.

3. You Can’t Build Your Dream Alone

I came home with a plan, but no money, connections, or place of my own to live. When I got out in March of 2013, I borrowed a woman’s cell phone to call my family—it was the first time I’d used a touchscreen phone, and I knew I had a lot of catching up to do. Back at my mom’s place on Rivington Street, I went to the park across the street at 5:30 a.m. every morning to work out. I made business cards and started pitching people who looked like SoulCycle regulars. I’d see women in leggings running in the East Village and SoHo, run alongside them, and strike up conversations. Soon enough, I had a whole group of people working out with me in the park. No equipment or frills—just straight—up bootcamp.

Later, I met Mike Rothman, cofounder of Thrillist. With his mentorship, I entered my personal training concept into a business-plan competition run by Defy Ventures, a nonprofit that supports ex-convicts pursuing entrepreneurial ventures in the legal economy. And I won. From there, I earned additional opportunities from executives at the NYSE and Gilt. My mentors and advisors taught me to turn the style of pitch I’d successfully used to sell drugs into one that would help me sell something much healthier and more legal—fitness.

4. Community Is Paramount

Once interest grew, I rented studio space, and when it grew again, I opened my own facility on Broome and Eldridge—the exact same corner where I used to sell drugs. The response was astounding. We cultivated a dedicated following including, but definitely not limited to, some of our original participants. My mom still lives in the same building where I grew up, and she comes to my class every day—she’s in her 60s and only speaks Spanish. Our community keeps us moving forward.

And we’ve stayed true to our vision of employing formerly incarcerated trainers. We have 10 trainers, 9 of whom have been formerly incarcerated. Now I have a contract with Rikers Island to train inmates to become personal trainers, allowing me to create a direct pipeline from jail to ConBody. To broaden our reach, I created ConBody Live, a virtual training platform this winter. We already have more than 4,500 people signed up from 20 different countries, and let me tell you, it takes a real team and team spirit to make it all work.

5. Everyone Won’t Share Your Vision, And That’s Okay

When I started ConBody, it was called Coss Athletics. The tagline was “prison-style bootcamp,” only it was written in such small font that you couldn’t really see it. People often thought I was hosting a regular bootcamp, and when they arrived, I had to tell them they had signed up for a prison-style bootcamp inspired by my experiences. A woman once replied, “You’ve been in prison? Oh my God!” and walked out. It was embarrassing—and that’s happened a few times. While this response was hard to see and hear, it helped inspire me to rebrand the business as ConBody. I haven’t won those people back, but my colleagues, my clients, and I know that today’s inmate is tomorrow’s neighbor, and that’s worth being a part of.

So, you took that great job in a new city, or you moved to a new place for a change or a partner’s career opportunity. However you landed in this unfamiliar place, you’re a stranger in a strange land—and craving new friendships.

As an adult, it can be tough to find a new friend group. “It’s fairly easy, in a new place, to make acquaintances—to just start recognizing people and saying, ‘Hello.’ It’s a lot more difficult to make deep friendships, like the kind where you can ask someone to watch your cat when you go out of town, or you have someone to call up and just say, ‘Hey, let’s go do something this weekend,’” says Melody Warnick, author of This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live.

Doing so takes a bit of creativity, plus courage to put yourself out there. Oh, and one other thing: “When you’re moving into a new community and trying to find your tribe, let your freak flag fly a little bit,” she says. It’s easier to find real friends when you’re sharing what you’re passionate about and not trying to fit in for the sake of making friends. Relationships built on false impressions aren’t the ones that are going to stick, anyway. And here are some ways you can find likely prospects.

Start At Work

If you’ve moved to a new place for your job, your company’s HR department might have some tips and resources to help you get acclimated and start meeting people. And your coworkers might be good prospects to introduce you locally, says Jonathan R. Bennett, cofounder of The Popular Man, which teaches men and women to be more successful in social situations and at work. If they’re not forthcoming, take the initiative, he says.

“Too often, people sit back and wait for someone else to do the work, and that’s why I believe a lot of adults of all ages are lacking in friends,” he says. Your coworkers are an immediate source of contacts who know the area and other people. Dive in!

Seek Out “Blind Dates”

When Elaine Appleton Grant, creator of One More Shot, a podcast about people who are making great ideas a reality, moved from rural New Hampshire to Denver, she reached out to her contacts and asked them to “set her up” with people they knew in the area. She wasn’t looking for romantic relationships, she was looking for friends. A mutual friend introduced Grant to another woman who lived in Denver, and the two met for coffee.

“It really was like having a blind date for a friend. Because she was this good professional friend, and they were good friends, I think that [our mutual friend] really had a sense that we would hit it off,” Grant says.

Revisit The Familiar

If you had communities in your former home, look for them in your new city, too. If you practice a religion, seek out your local house of worship and introduce yourself to the staff and clergy. If you belonged to a hiking or cycling club, look for similar groups in your new city. These types of groups give you an immediate common interest and a roster of activities for your social calendar, Warnick says. Search social media, especially Facebook, to find specialty groups and interest areas. Look for opportunities on Meetup.com or Nextdoor.

But, Warnick advises, use “Craigslist rules” for general safety when meeting people you don’t know for the first few times. “Meet in a group if you can, which is why a Meetup is really good. Meet in public places. Don’t invite strangers over to your house the first time that you’re connecting with them. Be smart about it,” she says. But don’t be overly fearful, either. Most people have great experiences with the people they meet online, she says.

Scour Social Media

Travel writer Lola Méndez has been traveling full-time for the past two years and is often in a new city for a week or less. She doesn’t have time to wait around to find new friends. When she’s planning her next sojourn, she searches Instagram for popular hashtags related to the place she’s visiting. If she sees someone in the area who posts about similar interests or seems to know the locale well, she’ll contact them and explain that she’s a writer who will be in town, and ask them if they have time to meet up. She says she met most of her friends in Florence that way.

“I was able to surround myself with creative experts and locals alike,” she says.

In addition, she is involved in a number of travel writer groups online. Her colleagues there have helped her arrange meetings with people who ultimately became friends.

Tap Your Alumni Groups

If you went to a school or worked at a company that has an alumni group, look for local chapters. If none exist, contact the head of the group to find out if there are other alumni in your area, and see if they’ll arrange an introduction, Warnick suggests. Many also have online groups that can be useful for meeting local people.

Mix Business And Personal

Grant found another friend, who she calls her “professional twin” because she also produces podcasts, by attending a women’s networking event. The two became fast friends.

Those types of in-person professional events might sound so old-school to millennials, but going to local professional group meetings can help both your career and your personal life by introducing you to more people who are either a fit for friendship or know people who might be, she says.

Whatever route you decide to take, Warnick urges new residents to not overlook the value of building new friendships. “It’s almost impossible to feel really at home in a place and to really love where you live unless you have friends, neighbors, coworkers, and people that you like to spend time with to go along with that. It really is priority No. 1 when you move to a new place,” she says.

WHAT:“Creating Saturday Night Live: Visual Effects,” a behind the scenes look at some unsung heroes on the show.

WHO:SNL’s visual effects department.

WHY WE CARE: As SNL’s profile has risen in recent months, in tandem with presidential interest in the show and vice versa, the performers and writers have stepped up their game. One element of the show that has remained consistently excellent, though, without getting much credit for it, is how crisp and clean the digital shorts always end up, despite requiring complicated work in a pressure cooker situation. A new video brings us inside the weekly routine of the team who’s responsible.

We’ve already seen how much editing is involved in these shorts, but “Creating Saturday Night Live: Visual Effects” shows how much digital trickery is required to make them pop. When viewers see Mikey Day get karate-kicked through a wall, fly through subsequent rooms and walls, and then crash into a car, destroying its windows, it requires just as much green screen and knob-twirled sweetening as a Fast and Furious fight scene. The difference is, as the video reminds us up top, that SNL‘s VFX team often only has 12 hours each week to make it happen.

Have a look below to see some before-and-after coverage of all the effects work that goes into each week’s episode.

Eighteen months ago, British inventor Richard Browning tried an experiment: he strapped a small gas turbine to his arm to see if he could get liftoff (don’t try this at home, we’re obligated to add). Several experiments later, after he and his team added more engines to each arm and leg, his homemade jetpack was working, and he could fly for as long as 12 minutes.

At TED 2017, he headed outside to demonstrate for the crowd. The vision, for the moment, is to build a new type of extreme sports equipment–though it could potentially be used in other ways, such as military rescues in areas where a helicopter might attract gunfire.

Just saw Richard Browning fly his jetpack at #TED2017pic.twitter.com/V8Qx39JVaT

— Adele Peters (@adele_peters) April 27, 2017

“For the immediate future, I would liken it to a jet ski,” Browning tells Fast Company. “There’s no real practical purpose to it, it’s just a massive amount of fun. But, like technology has a habit, I think actually, by accident, we’ve opened up a whole new avenue of human flight.”

Through his startup, Gravity, he’s working to build a version that can stay in the air longer and fly higher. “I don’t think anyone’s going to go down to Walmart or take the kids to school in any of this stuff for a while,” he told the audience at TED. “But the team at Gravity are building some awesome technology that’s going to make this look like child’s play.”

Browning’s vision of an “augmented human” was inspired by his father’s dreams of flight, and his own realization that a set of small jet engines might actually get him airborne.

“I think we all, every now and then, dare believe something that’s on the edge of our capability,” says Browning. “And when that thing is also on the edge of what the rest of society thinks is impossible, that’s even more exciting. Sometimes, very rarely, one of those things gets across the line.”

The engines could run on biodiesel, but Browning acknowledges that the flight suit isn’t exactly sustainable, at least in its current form. “Even in the display today, I think we burned through 12 liters of fuel,” he says. “It’s not an efficient way of moving around. But then, it’s early stage.”

For the past seven years, Lloyd Ahlquist (aka EpicLLOYD) has built a massive digital brand as one half of the duo behind Epic Rap Battles of History. The YouTube channel has amassed 14.2 million subscribers and garnered more than 2.5 billion views to date. As time-consuming as it is to write, produce, and sometimes star in videos, Ahlquist has been steadily carving out his own creative identity with music albums, acting gigs, and most recently his own scripted show Epic Studios.

Epic Studios follows Lloyd Steflan (Ahlquist) from Chicago to Toronto after his estranged father dies and leaves him the deed to a ramshackle recording studio in Canada. Much like Flight of the Conchords or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Epic Studios features an original song per episode. Yet unlike either show, Ahlquist’s was created specifically for digital–each of the 13 episodes runs only about 10 minutes and will be available for free on Ahlquist’s YouTube channel.

“A lot of people are going to watch on their phones and the music videos, which are fast and flashy and pop-y, are about two to three minutes of that 10 minutes so the story gets there and it stays funny,” Ahlquist says. “I think the level of quality matches any sort of paid subscription platform that we have out there like a YouTube Red or a Fullscreen. Ours is just on regular old YouTube–that’s what used to be really exciting about YouTube is that you can see everything for free.”

The concept for the show was born out of friends prodding Ahlquist to expand his acting and rapping skills beyond Epic Rap Battles of History. He entered the idea for Epic Studios in the Stand Up and Pitch contest at Montreal’s comedy festival Just for Laughs. It didn’t win but it caught the attention of the right people who eventually paired Ahlquist with Toronto-based production companies iThentic and Farmhouse.

“I would never look a gift horse in the mouth about the popularity of Epic Rap Battles–it’s awesome to be recognized from that. But I wanted to see what else I can do and where else I can go,” Ahlquist says. “So it takes a little bit of stamina to explain to people what this is, to explain to people that I’m doing different things.”

Epic Rap Battles of History and Ahlquist’s other YouTube series Dis Raps For Hire both rely on a level of collaboration with the audience in the sense that they help fuel Ahlquist’s creative decisions on what and who to write raps about. Working with feedback and suggestions speaks directly to Ahlquist’s improv background and also helped to frame Epic Studios.

“Collaboration for me is far more natural than anything else. I come from an improv comedy background so it’s sort of in my blood to listen and bounce ideas off each other,” Ahlquist says. “In terms of Epic Studios, it was like, ‘What would you like to see me do more of? You like me rapping? Let’s put a rap song in these episodes.’ I have a certain personality that I think people respond to–let’s make a character that’s like that and maybe blow it out a little bit more and see what happens.”

Watch episodes of Epic Studioshere.

This month, we learned how to avoid job interview mistakes before you even open your mouth, why Sheryl Sandberg is trying to make Facebook’s work culture more supportive of grieving, and how the most productive people start and end their workdays.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the month of April:

1. The Surprising Ways You Ruined Your Interview Before You Even Opened Your Mouth

When you go into a job interview, you probably focus on what you’re going to say. This is definitely important, but you also need to make sure that you’re not overlooking the nonverbal stuff. While first impressions might not count for everything, they’re extremely difficult to undo—especially on a job interview.

2. The 7 Questions Recruiters At Companies Like Amazon And Spotify Wish You Would Ask

Job interviews are unpredictable. But often you can count on the hiring manager wrapping up with, “So do you have any questions for us?” What you say from this point on is just as important as the answers you give beforehand. Fast Company spoke to hiring managers at employers like Amazon and Spotify to find which questions they love being asked, and how posing them the right way can show off your skills, personality, and priorities.

3. Three Habits Of The Best Job Candidates I’ve Ever Interviewed

For many of us, what it takes to excel at job interviews is a bit of a mystery. But an experienced recruiter says that it all comes down to three simple habits that she’s seen time and again among candidates who have passed with flying colors. This month we learned what you can do on your next interview to become the type of candidate hiring managers love.

4. Want To Be Happier And More Successful? Learn To Like Other People

Most self-improvement advice comes down to tips for upgrading some part of ourselves—the focus is on us, and what we need to do. However, research from the University of Georgia hints that there may be an overlooked approach to much the same outcomes: seeing the good in others. This month we explored why the best self-help advice may not have much to do with ourselves at all.

5. I Work At Slack–Here’s How I Use It To Manage My Workday

Many of us probably use Slack and other group chat platforms to message our coworkers, or to make lunch plans with colleagues who sit on the other side of the office. But Slack actually has features that go beyond messaging, including bots that schedule your meetings and order your food for you. One Slack employee shares how he utilizes the app to streamline his workday.

6. Three Questions I Ask Every Job Candidate To Test Their Soft Skills

7. How The Most Successful People Start And End Their Workdays

What you do when you first wake up and before you go to bed can impact how productive you’ll be for the hours in between. While no hack and habit is universal, it never hurts to take inspiration from successful leaders and entrepreneurs. From 20-minute morning strolls to reading the New York Times on mobile at bedtime (yes, you read that right), here’s how a few of them rise and shine, then power down.

8. Five Things I’ve Learned As A New Manager At Google

Nine months ago, Amber Yust became a manager for a team of privacy engineers at Google. Like anyone stepping into a new role, there were aspects of her job that she didn’t anticipate. This week she shared how she discovered, among other things, how to be more than just a “crap umbrella” for her direct reports.

9. The Bigger Lesson From Facebook’s New Bereavement Leave Policy

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s life came to a halt after her husband’s unexpected death a during 2015 vacation to Mexico. After a leave of absence, Sandberg went back to work and instituted a policy she hopes will change how companies approach bereavement. This month, we learned why grief counselors believe this will be a long process, but are hopeful that Sandberg is moving the needle in the right direction.

10. Could Time-Blocking Replace Your To-Do List?

To-do lists frustrate many of us. We start the day with four things to tick off, and by the end of the day we’ve often only accomplished two (and added eight more.) So one writer decided to experiment with an alternative called “time-blocking—here’s how she fared.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s central argument for eliminating net neutrality rules, which he introduced this week with a plan to “reverse the mistake” of the Obama-era regulations, is that doing so will fire up investment in broadband networks. But that prediction is very optimistic, say experts who warn that his proposal could very well do little or nothing to stimulate such investment.

Back in 2015, the Democratic-controlled FCC reclassified broadband as a Title II communication service to be regulated like a public utility. The new rules prevented big ISPs like Verizon and Comcast from throttling the speed of sites and apps and setting up paid fast lanes.

Pai’s central argument is that those net neutrality rules had the immediate effect of slowing down investment in broadband networks. He said the internet was already working fine before the FCC stepped in to impose unnecessary regulations for purely political reasons.

According to backgrounder sent out from Pai’s office, the 12 largest U.S. ISPs spent 5.6% (or $3.6 billion) less on building out their broadband networks during the first two years of the Title II era. (The statistic lacks a citation.)

It’s true that ISPs desperately want to extract more “value” from the networks they operate. They detest the idea of operating a neutral “dumb pipe,” and detest the idea that the government is regulating them into that role. They want to be able to offer fast lanes to internet companies like Netflix, many of which, by the way, are willing to pay. ISPs want to sell zero-rated services where certain websites or services are carved out and delivered with no data charges. When prevented from monetizing the network to the fullest, as they see it, they’re naturally a little less excited about building on to their networks.

But Pai lays the entire blame for the investment slowdown at the feet of the previous FCC that passed the 2015 Open Internet Order, and that’s where his argument starts to sound like a political one.

“While investment in broadband infrastructure has certainly dwindled in recent years, the impact that net neutrality regulation has had is very much open to debate,” says Dan Hays, global tech, media, and telecom lead at PwC’s Strategy& group.

“In fact, it’s quite plausible that growth in market penetration of broadband services, coupled with acceleration of industry consolidation over the past few years, have more to do with reduced spending, despite the pleas of network operators,” Hays says. The subtext here is that investors in telecom companies, as a rule, detest massive new capital expenditure spending on network infrastructure. Combining with other networks is one way to avoid doing so.

Pai said the real losers are poor and rural Americans who have to live with slow or no internet service at all, because the smaller competitive carriers that might serve them are disincentivized from building out their networks. Pai believes the return of broadband to Title I and a lighter regulatory touch will result in more infrastructure investment, more jobs, and better broadband.

PwC’s Hays points out that doing away with network neutrality rules is a change that would apply to the whole ISP industry, and might not have the hoped-for effects. In fact, Hays says, it’s more likely that it wouldn’t have those effects.

“Even if rolling back net neutrality regulations does spark an increase in network investments, the questions will be ‘how much’ and ‘where,'” Hays says. “Deregulation is unlikely to solve the fundamental economics problem of deploying broadband networks in rural and low-income areas of the United States.”

Pai’s rollback of net neutrality guarantees might help one industry (big ISPs) but hurt another (internet companies). Having to pay for “internet fast lanes” might dramatically change the economics of selling an internet service.

“Although network investments could increase . . . internet companies providing over-the-top services—particularly the vibrant startup economy that the country has prized—could well be at risk,” Hays says.

Carriage charges might begin ratcheting up until smaller companies can’t afford to pay. So broadband service might get better and become more available, but the diversity of content consumers can access using it might diminish. And yes, content is king, not the pipe used to grab it.

Pai and the FCC has now opened the new proposal to roll back net neutrality protections to public comment. The commission will vote on the proposal in May.

Meanwhile, Congress is watching closely, and some members believe that Congressional action to settle the matter once and for all might be the best way forward.

And finally, even if Pai can push his proposal through the commission, a raft of internet companies, and tech and free speech advocacy groups will be waiting in line to say “See you in court, Ajit.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently hosted a roundtable discussion at Twitter HQ with the stars of The Circle. Adapted from Dave Eggers’s 2013 novel, The Circle is a not-too-distant look into the future of what social media can become. Spoiler alert: it’s not pretty.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is a rising star at the social media company The Circle. All is well until she agrees to be a part of an experiment created by the company’s founder Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) that calls into question very pertinent issues like privacy and surveillance.

The cast and director of The Circle brought those topics and more to Dorsey doorstep at Twitter HQ for a live “fireside” chat. Below are Dorsey’s highlights from the discussion.

Fostering Diversity in Silicon Valley And Beyond

“First and foremost we want to build a service that is accessible to anyone. We need different perspectives to understand why it’s not accessible to someone. So we benefit pretty dramatically from having different perspectives within the company, different ways of thinking, different backgrounds, different contexts from people all over the world. And if we can’t have that insight, we certainly can’t present that externally as well. We saw an opportunity not just to change the ratio but also hold ourselves accountable to it very publicly. We were one of the first companies to actually share our goals, not just [of] where we are, but what we’re trying to get to because it is something that not only we have to address but our industry has to address and other industries have to address as well.”

Building Up From Within

“I think the more important [thing] is not just diversity but inclusion as well and making sure that we’re building an environment that helps everyone feel welcome, helps everyone feel that they can thrive, helps everyone feel that they can set a bar for themselves in terms of their skill level of what they want to do. We’ve had people join the company as a supporter and have aspirations to become an engineer or designer. Having that  internal path and mobility is also really important because I think we focus a lot in our industry and certainly elsewhere on the people we don’t have, how to get them in versus the people we do have and how to how to grow them. So we’ve been putting a lot more emphasis on the people we do have and how do we build a more inclusive environment which will have an end result of creating more diversity of gender, of race, of sexual preference, but also of ideology so that we’re really understanding all perspectives.”

Pinpointing the Diversity Problem

“I’m not sure what the what the causes are. I think some of it probably comes down to location and where a lot of these things started and just holding on to that particular locale versus really broadening out. But I think [it’s about] first just acknowledging it and then what are the most tangible steps that we can take, what can actually build into our DNA and our practice every single day has been our focus.”

When Social Media Goes South

“The biggest thing that technology can do in the positive or negative is just change the velocity of something. This is obviously a complicated problem that we don’t fully understand yet because the technology is so new. I think if we can create greater venue for people to offer support faster, to provide resources of help, if you do have more negative leaning thoughts, to just try to use the crowd and the support structure that you may have around you to influence a different sort of outcome. But it’s new and we have to learn really, really quickly. But I do think we can’t just be toolmakers here. I think we need to make sure that we are advocating for positive usage of it, realizing that there will be negative. And the faster we can learn from that and understand where the appropriate time is to help and and how to help, we get better. So we just how to make it a priority.”

Two years into my “freelance career,” I was making a whopping $10,000 a year—barely enough to qualify as a hobby, let alone a career. Oh, and I still lived with my parents.

Worse, I knew why. Despite putting consistent effort into my writing, I wasn’t fully committed to turning it into a sustainable, self-sufficient career. Because back at Mom’s, an organic, gluten-free dinner was served at promptly 6 p.m. every day, no matter how much or little I worked. I had everything I needed without having to lift a finger. Comfort kept me complacent.

These days, I’m proud to say I’m no longer living off my parents’ good graces. In the year-plus that I’ve been fully independent as a writer, I’ve been hired as the lead writer for national ad campaigns, worked with multinational companies, and built a sustainable coaching business to supplement my writing income. But it took a few major habit changes to finally overcome my failure to launch. Here’s how I did it.

Related: How I Managed To Save Money On A $25,000 Salary In New York City

1. I Moved Out And Set A Deadline For Making It

Sometimes all you need is a good deadline to whip your butt into gear. I set mine at two months—because that’s about how long I’d have before the money I’d saved for living expenses would run dry. I rented a little place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told myself I had to push myself every day in order to grow my client list. Otherwise I’d starve or get evicted, whichever came first.

Necessity really is the mother of invention, it turns out. If you don’t have any material reason to hustle, perform at your peak, and succeed, well, you won’t. The comfort of living at my parents’ house, demoralizing as it might’ve felt at the time, was still proving a crutch. Back at home I spent one day every two weeks looking for new clients. And even then, sometimes I’d merely think, “Huh, it’d sure be nice to write for them”—I wouldn’t even send a query!

That kind of laziness wasn’t doing me any favors. So in my first month solo, I sent out more queries than I had in my first two years trying to hack it as a freelancer—because I had to eat. Pitching at that volume helped me become a professional, a mind-set shift that doesn’t always come naturally to first-time independent workers. I learned to think like an editor, scan for opportunities like a business owner, and schedule my time like a manager. Within three months, my success rate went from landing one in every 20 or so pitches to nearly one in three.

If you think you’re not ready to move out, no one is! I had a really short runway when I finally hit the ground running. But that was enough to push me to work like a dog and get my cash flow . . . flowing.

2. I Hit The Books

Building a thriving freelance career is an exercise in confidence building. Forcing yourself to go independent—whether that’s quitting your day job for good or moving out of your parents’ house—will give you a baseline to start out with, but to really thrive, you’ll need daily doses of vitamin K: knowledge. It’s the ultimate confidence booster.

There were many times when I felt helpless in those first few days and weeks in my new Albuquerque apartment. But that feeling began to retreat the more I learned about my craft. And when I cemented the habit of reading daily about how to write better, I finally developed the skills and confidence I needed to land gigs from big magazines and global companies.

These days, I shoot for 30 minutes to an hour a day of lessons from successful writers. I do my best to learn from their mistakes and their biggest breakthroughs alike. And I come out of each session with better techniques to sell and execute more articles. My personal writing bible is Writing Tools, the 2008 strategic guidebook for writers by Roy Peter Clark. After taking notes on that baby in my first month after going solo, I finally started to feel like I was going from wannabe to bona fide pro.

3. I Keep My Energy Up (Hint: It Takes Work)

Writing well takes energy—hell, doing any kind of sustained work at a high quality takes energy, especially when you don’t have a manager forcing you to do it. Before I found success as a freelancer, my energy levels dictated my day; I simply wouldn’t produce much if I felt tired. But since now that isn’t really an option, it’s got to be the other way around: my workflow needs to dictate my energy.

So there are a few habits I’ve adopted to help me keep my energy levels up. First, I exercise right when I wake up. If I don’t get my blood pumping first thing in the morning, I tend to feel bad and do nothing; it’s not just a physical booster, it’s also a mood booster. I’ve become disciplined about working out, no matter how I feel upon waking up. It kickstarts my confidence and gives me the energy to smash some keys.

But one early-morning session usually isn’t enough to carry me through the entire workday. I make sure to break away from my desk every 30–45 minutes to do some squats or pushups, or just go for a quick walk. These little spurts of exercise keep my body fresh and my mind sharp.

Second, I need good, nutritious food. When I was a rookie, I’d wake up and write first thing in the morning. But my brain was starved of glucose, and more often than not, I’d feel like fainting by the time I’d reached the end of my draft. That wasn’t sustainable, and the results weren’t sellable. So now, after exercising and before sitting down to crank out my first piece of the day, I fill up the tank with a bunch of healthy fats and proteins: yogurt, almond butter, eggs, cheese, protein shakes, coconut oil, macadamia nuts—the list goes on. This gives me a slow burn of energy to stay focused and on task throughout the day.

Related:What Happened When I Gave Up Gluten, Sugar, Dairy, And Coffee

Third, I meditate. Before picking up this habit, I’d often stress myself out, lose focus, and burn out by worrying over stupid things. By 3 p.m. I’d crash because my thoughts were running wild and killing my focus.

So now I take 30 minutes in the afternoon to do nothing. I lie down. I focus on my breathing—slow and from the belly. I center my thoughts on gratitude and opportunity. And I visualize kicking so much ass that my right foot sometimes even begins to throb a little (the power of a vivid imagination!). This one habit maintains my energy, sure. But meditation also helps feed the creativity I need to draw on continuously in order to work.

Freelancing definitely isn’t for everybody. It takes serious self-motivation, discipline, and confidence, which themselves take some habit changes in order to develop. But once I’d managed to retool my daily behaviors, I found myself in a self-sustaining cycle—with enough cash on hand to make a third month’s rent, then a fourth’s, and on and on.

Daniel Dowling is the founder of MillennialSuccess.io, where he shares action steps and inspiration for millennials and their employers. You can find more of his work on Entrepreneur, MindBodyGreen, and Fitbit.com.

When she was growing up in Portland, Olivia, who is now 22, never made the connection between her drawings–first with crayons as an elementary schooler, then moving into comics in middle and high school–and a way to support herself. Around three years ago, finding herself in a hostile living situation and needing a way to get out, she realized she didn’t really know how. “I wasn’t sure what I could do to support myself,” Olivia, who prefers not to share her last name, tells Fast Company. “I still loved making art, but I needed to do something.”

Olivia’s detailed line drawings decorate three of the shirts in dfrntpigeon’s new collection, which retail for $26. One features a series of hands spelling out letters in ASL. For another, Olivia drew a Statue of Liberty with the head of a pigeon, surrounded by flames and linked handcuffs; for Olivia, the drawing was a way to express a sense of hope even amid the current tumultuous political climate. Sharing that message with others in such a tangible way is a new experience for her. “I never thought I’d see something I drew on a shirt, and see someone else wearing it,” she says. “It’s amazing.”

The job-training program, says New Avenues enterprise director Sara Weihmann, consists of workshops and meetings with employment specialists, who either direct youth toward local opportunities, or help them start up with one of New Avenues’ proprietary enterprises. When Olivia first went through the program, she worked at Ben & Jerry’s through the business’ partnership with New Avenues; through another enterprise, New Avenues Ink, youth learn screen printing and serve a long list of local clients.

Before dfrntpigeon launched around a year and a half ago as the nonprofit’s third venture, it had just been an informal drawing group made up of New Avenues youth, Olivia says. But when New Avenues brought AKQA in to brainstorm some ideas for how to translate the group’s creativity into a venture, the agency immediately made the connection between the screen printing enterprise and the design capabilities of the New Avenues youth.

The collaboration with AKQA has made the program’s link to Portland’s thriving creative scene even more tangible. Olivia is currently interning at AKQA, where she’s gaining experience with more aspects of the city’s design community; it’s not so hard for her to imagine that she could have a future in it, too.

The name dfrntpigeon, Weihmann says, emerged from one of AKQA’s earliest brainstorming sessions with the New Avenues’ youth, when they were sketching to come up with an idea for what the enterprise could be called. “One had drawn a series of pigeons doing funny, comic things, and AKQA said wait, let’s roll with this concept,” Weihmann says. “It evolved into this whole conversation about the pigeon really being seen as a street bird, that they were kind of this ugly part of the landscape that people walked by without seeing any potential or positivity.” The youth, many of whom felt out of place in their city or had spent some time on its streets, related. By naming the enterprise “different pigeon,” and creating work that expresses their identity through their unique creative abilities, the New Avenues youth are disproving that image.

Elon Musk wants to dig a 3D network of holes underneath Los Angeles to alleviate roadway traffic. He offered a conceptual look at how such a system of tunnels would work in a video today during his interview at the 2017 TED Conference.

Elevators that look like simple parking spaces would take cars beneath street level to underground roadways, where the cars could speed along at 130 miles per hour. A person could theoretically get from Westwood to Los Angeles International Airport in 5 to 6 minutes—a commute that normally takes around 40 minutes.

He rejected the idea that a tunneling project would disrupt the lives of people who live in Los Angeles. “If that tunnel is dug more than 3 or 4 tunnel diameters beneath your house you will not be able to detect it being dug,” said Musk.

The companies cool stuff I see outside the office. Can't wait to see some tunnels! #theboringcompany #workperks

A post shared by Ryan Schroeder (@schrodude) on Apr 26, 2017 at 7:00pm PDT

How will he pull this off, and how much will it cost? Musk estimates the cost of the Los Angeles subway extension to be approximately a billion dollars per mile and believes he can reduce those costs by tenfold through correcting inefficiencies that are endemic to traditional tunneling techniques. For one, he plans to make the diameter of the tunnels only 12 feet wide, much smaller than the typical 26-28 feet. He also says that a machine that tunnels and reinforces continuously will allow the burrowing process to go more quickly—especially if he were to increase the power of such a machine. Just yesterday, an image of The Boring Company‘s gigantic digging machine was posted on Instagram by one of SpaceX’s engineers. Musk first revealed his aspirations to build a new system of underground transit last December.

When asked why underground rather than flying cars he said, “If there are a whole bunch of flying cars that’s not an anxiety reducing situation.”

Two years ago Nike unveiled the FlyEase shoe, designed for athletes who have trouble putting on and taking off shoes. A collaboration between Nike designer Tobie Hatfield and a high schooler named Matthew Walzer who has cerebral palsy.

That experience led the athletic giant to double down on its efforts to find a shoe design that would help athletes of all abilities to better control their footwear. Back in October Nike launched the Nike Ease Challenge, an open call to designers, engineers, athletes and everyone else to create a winning shoe design for $50,000 and the chance to see their design come to life. And on April 10th, a judging panel that included Nike CEO Mark Parker, Olympian Carl Lewis, WNBA star Elena Delle Donne, and 17-time Paralympic medalist Tatyana McFadden picked a winner.

Brett Drake from Cheynne, Wyoming re-engineered the support system in the 2016 Nike Hyperdunk into an adaptive fit system, featuring an innovative rear-entry anchored by lightweight magnets.

Apple is expected to announce an adequate to half-decent quarter when it reports earnings after market close on Tuesday. Anything that beats analyst expectations (see below) would be pretty much OK with everybody.

Why such low expectations for one of the most valuable companies in the world? The iPhone remains Apple’s bread and butter, and the company will announce two or three new ones this fall, so we expect that lots of people are holding off buying iPhones until then. The first quarter also tends to be seasonally depressed every year. Given those factors—and that Apple’s Q1 last year was not very impressive—the bar is pretty low.

Here’s what we expect to see:

Phones. Apple will likely sell close to 52 million iPhones for the quarter—a one percent increase over the same quarter last year. Anything above that is gravy. Last quarter Apple sold a surprising 78.3 million devices, ending a three-consecutive-quarter trend of declining sales.

Revenue. Apple said early that it expects to report between $51.5B and $53.5B in revenue for the quarter. Yahoo’s analyst consensus calls for just shy of $53B. I’m betting Apple will report revenues just above $53B. Happy days.

Services Business. Everybody’s been downright bubbly about the surprising growth of Apple’s services business, meaning all the digital content we can buy from the App Store or iTunes. The services business grew 18% in the final quarter of 2016, contributing $7.2 billion of revenue (CEO Tim Cook said the services business contributed $20 billion in revenue in 2016). Analysts will be looking for a continuation of that growth this quarter. Cook says Apple is trying to double its services business in the next four years, so any setbacks will be looked at harshly.

China Market. Everybody’s keeping a nervous eye on China, a market that Apple is counting on for growth but that has been underperforming in the past year. But, as Jason Snell at Six Colors points out, Apple’s China sales have slipped below its European sales in the last three quarters. If this trend continues, CEO Tim Cook will have some explaining to do.

Mac. Mac sales slid down for an entire year before growing slightly last quarter, when Apple reported 5.4 million units sold worldwide. Gartner believes Apple sold 4.2 million Macs in the first calendar quarter of 2017, which, if accurate, would mean another quarter of growth (4 million were sold in the same quarter a year earlier).

iPad. We’re expecting more bad news on the iPad front. Sales are likely to continue to falter—we’ve gotten used to it now—as they have for the past couple of years. Apple recently announced (in early April) a competitively priced $329 iPad, but we suspect it’s too early to really see how enthusiastically the market will receive that device.

Watch. The Apple Watch doesn’t contribute a whole lot to the bottom line yet, but the device had what I’d call a break-out holiday quarter. Based on some online sales tracking numbers, we’re inclined to believe the Watch sold as many as 5 million units in the quarter. Apple won’t say how many it sold in the March quarter (or any quarter), but we’ll be looking for signs that it sustained those sales figures, thus opening a new chapter in the story of Apple Watch-as-mass-market-device.

Apple will announce results after market close on Tuesday and then hold an earnings call with analysts. We’ll be reporting the earnings and listening in on the call.

And here’s some CHARTS!

How was that made? What’s in it? Where’s it from? Were the workers exploited? Were the cows pumped with antibiotics? Is it gluten-free?

Consumers nowadays, especially millennials, are increasingly demanding transparency in what goes in and on their bodies. And for some—what goes on their finger.

“We’re asking questions about everything we buy now: I want to know that my makeup isn’t full of toxins, my clothing wasn’t made by children, and my food is free of pesticides,” says Melissa Mock, a 30-year-old tech startup executive who got engaged last summer. “So of course, I wanted to know about the origins of my diamond.”

She and her now-fiancé had talked about her wishes for a rock that wasn’t mined by exploited workers or used to fund endless internecine conflicts, as highlighted in the 2006 film starring Leo DiCaprio,Blood Diamond.

On Labor Day, in the garden of the home they share in Santa Monica, Mock’s boyfriend proposed to her with an emerald-cut, “Pinterest-perfect” diamond designed by Vrai & Oro. The stone was created by Diamond Foundry, a San Francisco startup that makes diamonds using a machine that heats carbon to temperatures as high as the outer layer of the sun.

We’re not talking cubic zirconia here. The stones are atomically identical to diamonds that come out of the ground, and conflict-free. Mock was thrilled.

“I love the idea that a diamond is this beautiful, high-quality stone that will not scratch and really does last forever,” she says. “Diamond Foundry had found a way to replicate a process that was happening in nature—they found a hack.”

Mock and others like her are rewriting the rules of engagement traditions. Some are even choosing alternative gemstones, such as sapphires and opals. But among those who want diamonds, a growing number are considering lab-grown diamonds, according to a Bain survey. While sales of manmade diamonds amount to only 1% of the market, there’s reason to believe there’ll be major growth over the next decade.

For one thing, the production of mined diamonds is expected to peak in 2019, according to The Economist. At that point, supplies of new diamonds will begin to decrease by one to two percent a year.

Demand is also slowing: Bain’s 2016 Global Diamond Industry Report said the outlook for the $200 billion sector is challenging and “uncertainties cloud the social, political and economic environments in key markets.”

The other thing the man-made bling has going for it is the retail price. Depending on the jeweler, you can save between 20% and 40% on a lab-grown version.

“For the most popular shapes and sizes, the savings is 35%,” says Krish Himmatramka, the founder of Do Amore, an ethical jewelry startup that sells both kinds. For a one-carat diamond that is near colorless and clean to the naked eye, the cost of a mined diamond is about $5,000 at Do Amore, while a lab-grown diamond is closer to $3,300. “With that extra money, you could purchase the engagement ring setting and still have money left over,” Himmatramka says.

“I was pretty horrified about what went on in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s and how diamonds funded these warlords,” he told Time. “Amnesty International projected around 4 million people lost their lives as a result of these diamond sales.”

Diamond Foundry was founded in San Francisco in 2012 with $100 million in funding from a range of investors, including DiCaprio. Engineers from Stanford, M.I.T, and Princeton were also on board. It was one of three in the world turning out what are also called conflict-free diamonds. The other two are Singapore-based Generic Diamond and Russia-based New Diamond Technology.

Diamond Foundry’s first challenge was technical: building a plasma reactor that could create a high-quality diamond. After years of running thousands of physics simulations, they put together a machine made up of hundreds of precision-engineered parts that would generate extreme heat, explains CEO Martin Roscheisen, who earned a PhD in engineering from Stanford, graduating from the same program and class as Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

In nature, diamonds are formed when carbon is exposed to very high pressure deep in the Earth and are then carried back to the surface by volcanic eruptions. Part of their appeal comes from the fact that it takes a rare combination of geographical and geological factors for them to exist. Back in 1941, G.E. developed a machine that would heat carbon under pressure to create diamonds that could be used for industrial purposes, but those diamonds tended to be brittle and unsuitable for jewelry.

When word spread about the Diamond Foundry’s work, brands across the diamond industry started reaching out, asking to buy some of this output. “We discovered a large industry under distress,” says Roscheisen. “Mined diamond supplies are declining, miners are extremely profitable but everybody following that in the supply chain is extremely squeezed.”

Diamond Foundry’s diamonds entered the market in November 2015 and since then, its revenues have doubled every quarter, except for last quarter, when they tripled, according to Roscheisen. It is now in the process of quadrupling its capacity.

The company sells its own jewelry line on its website, but it also sells through retailers like Barneys and the direct-to-consumer startup Vrai & Oro that designed Melissa Mock’s ring.

“A lot of retailers right now love the fact that they now have an origin story around where the diamond comes from,” Roscheisen explains. “In any luxury product, provenance is really key. In the case of a mined diamond, you can’t really know, since it has changed hands two dozen times before it gets to you.”

For decades, the diamond industry has been tainted by the fact that the quest for diamonds has often led to violence, warfare, and human suffering.

Karen DeVincent, 29, who recently got engaged, said DiCaprio’s movie influenced the story behind her ring.

“I didn’t want to have such a special moment in my life tarnished by somebody else’s pain,” says DeVincent, whose fiancé presented her a ring sporting a pink sapphire, her gem of choice.

Vanessa Stofenmacher, founder and creative director of Vrai & Oro, says DeVincent’s perspective is fairly typical of the millennial generation, her target consumer. She’s spoken to hundreds of couples in their twenties and thirties as she was launching a collection of engagement and wedding rings. In her focus groups, some couples favored alternative gems, but others were keen on diamonds, but wary of their same ethical baggage. “A diamond is still an instant symbol,” Stofenmacher says. “You can put it on Instagram and everyone knows you’re engaged.”

“In most cases, they actually prefer them,” Stofenmacher says. “This is the first time they are being introduced to diamonds, so they are a lot easier to educate than someone who has been buying diamonds for 30 or 40 years.”

Krish Himmatramka, the founder of Do Amore, gives buyers a wide range of choices: mined diamonds, lab-grown diamonds (from the Russian company New Diamond Technology), sapphires, and clear white gem called moissanites.

“Millennials don’t believe that mined diamonds are somehow superior,” Himmatramka says. “Our brand tends to attract customers who care about ethics, but we’re finding that we don’t need to make the case that they should consider an alternative to a diamond.”

For one thing, older generations have more money to spend on diamond jewelry and for another, the logic that convinces an American audience to buy man-made diamonds won’t necessarily convince Indian or Chinese consumers.

Bain’s survey of millennials around the world found that the concept of lab-grown diamonds was slowly catching on. Young people in China, like those in the U.S., cited the lower price of synthetic diamonds as a key decision driver, while those in India appreciated the better ratio of price to quality. In both China and India, young people liked the cool technology that goes into making the diamonds. But there were also some negative associations with words like “fake,” “not real,” and “cheap” bandied about.

Every human relationship goes through ups and downs, and the one you share with your boss is no exception. Think about your friends: There are times when you’re in touch with one friend every day and other times when you barely talk. You might even be so annoyed at some of your friends that you don’t want to hear from them for a while, or even ever again.

These vicissitudes are natural, but when they happen in the workplace they can make you feel like you’re playing a giant game of chess with your colleagues—particularly your boss. Here’s how to cut through your paranoia, figure out what’s going on, and repair your relationship with your boss if it turns out you need to.

Stop Reading Tea Leaves

First things first: Your boss’s opinion of your performance matters—make no mistake about that. But getting an accurate reading on your boss’s opinion of your performance is probably harder than you think. You probably shouldn’t try reading those tea leaves on a daily basis. It’ll just drive you insane.

I’ve been both an employee and a boss over the years, so I know how easy it is to read into things like the wording your boss might use to give you a bit of feedback or offer advice. I can remember once anxiously rereading the notes I’d gotten from my boss after a performance review, trying to uncover the hidden meaning between the lines.

It was all for nothing. The fact is my boss didn’t write those notes all that carefully—they were meant to be taken pretty literally and superficially. What’s more, they might not have even convey that surface-level meaning all that well in the first place, especially if they were dashed off quickly. Hidden symbolism is the province of people with far more time on their hands than most bosses have. So don’t try interpreting mundane workplace situations for evidence of behind-the-scenes machinations.

Related:Four Easy Ways To Reboot Your Relationship With Your Boss

Be The One To Bring It Up First

That said, if you notice a consistent (and more or less explicit) negative thrust to your interactions with your boss, it’s time to step up and do something.

The most obvious thing to do is generally the right thing to do: Go talk to your boss. But it’s hard to take such direct approach for the same reason that many people avoid medical tests when they suspect they might get bad news. Uncertainty about the future seems preferable to knowing that there’s a problem.

But you’ve got to suck it up—and fast. The earlier you find out what the problem is, the more time you’ll have to do something about it before it becomes terminal. Having a frank discussion about any underlying issues at work is important in situations like these. It may be that your boss is actually non-confrontational to a fault, and needs a bit of a push (from you!) to open up about whatever’s going on. Until you give her that push, she’ll just keep coming off as passive aggressive or condescending. It’s always better to initiate an uncomfortable conversation than wait around for it to happen.

Related: How To Handle Your Boss’s Condescension

Branch Out And Make Some Allies

Of course, there are times when your boss is just unapproachable. You might love the organization you work for but find yourself stuck with a direct supervisor who’s difficult. That makes things a lot harder. Talking directly to this type of boss might make things worse rather than better.

In general, as soon as you recognize that you have a problem boss, you should probably start finding other mentors within your organization. But that’s especially true when your boss isn’t the type of person you can broach the subject with first. Grab a cup of coffee with other people whose opinions you respect. Ideally, do that before you need to pick their brains about particular problem you’re having—but better late than never.

If you do go to someone else, you should be clear about what you’re doing, otherwise it’ll just seem like you’re complaining or gossiping. Tell them you’re looking for advice or feedback and that you haven’t talked to your direct supervisor yet. If your boss has a reputation for being difficult, your new mentor will understand and may have some ideas for you. If your colleague thinks you’ve misunderstood your manager’s behavior, that’s still useful intel, and might lead to advice about how to open up a conversation you might’ve thought impossible.

No matter what, though, that gut impression that something’s out of whack between you and your boss is worth heeding. Use it as your cue to do some information-gathering. You need to know about the long-term trends in your performance and your chances of advancing anyhow—even when things are going great. It can be scary to seek out news you might not like hearing. But bad news is far easier to deal with than unpleasant surprises down the road.

Back in January, Full Frontal host Sam Bee announced she would host her version of the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which she conceptualized as a balm of sorts to the paralyzing uncertainty following a highly unconventional election that put a highly unconventional candidate in office.

The buzz around Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner snowballed with news outlets pulling out of the regular Correspondents’ Dinner and President Trump himself stating that he would hold a rally in Pennsylvania in lieu of attending. While Bee has said Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is by no means meant to overshadow the original, it’s hard to imagine how it wouldn’t.

Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner packed 2,500 attendees in Washington D.C.’s DAR Constitution Hall. In true Full Frontal fashion, Bee’s barbs were unmerciful and the evening’s targets ranging from CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker to Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, and obviously Trump:

“[The media] basically get paid to stand in a cage while a geriatric orangutan and his pet mob scream at you. It’s like a reverse zoo.”

“We are living in a golden age of journalism. Unfortunately, that’s partly due to a golden president who’s rumored to enjoy golden showers.”

“It just goes to show you that a giant pussy can get elected president as long as he doesn’t have one.”

But the event never strayed far from its goal of raising funds for Committee to Protect Journalists and trumpeting the need for quality journalism.

“We came here to Washington, D.C. to celebrate the free press,” Bee said her in opening monologue. “There are hundreds of journalists here, from the failing New York Times; to the failing, pile of garbage BuzzFeed; to the failing ‘what the fuck is ProPublica it sounds Mexican.’”

Bee did exactly what she does best: pelting her audience with rapid-fire truths wrapped in pointed humor that, as her correspondents can attest to, has managed to cut through party barriers.

“I’ve had people say, ‘I hate [Full Frontal] but I’ll talk to you,’” says correspondent Mike Rubens. “Obviously, we’ve focused a lot more on Trump, but when we can, we try to take shots at everyone–we try to cover different perspectives.”

“I think Sam is really likable,” says correspondent and co-producer Allana Harkin. “Even though she might be saying something that’s really harsh, you’re like, ‘goddammit, I still like this a lot.’”

The most impactful moments of Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner came from Bee and her team’s very active imaginations that dreamed up alternative worlds where Bee roasted Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Regan, and Bill Clinton; and delivered an impassioned monologue in present day where “Hillary Clinton [was] sworn in as president. The Patriots lost the Super Bowl. Lemonade won album of the year and every print of La La Land spontaneously combusted.”

However, the highlight of the night easily came from surprise guest Will Ferrell, who took the stage as his famous caricature of former President George W. Bush. Ferrell brilliantly contrasted what seemed like unheard of vitriol people had for Bush at the the time with the utter chaos Trump has brought about.

“History’s proved to be kinder to me than many of you thought it would. I was considered the worst president of all time–that has changed,” Ferrell said as Bush. “I needed eight years, a catastrophic flood, a war built on a lie, an economic disaster–the new guy needed 100 days. He’s now widely considered the worst president of all time–I come in second. I’m fine by that–no one remembers second place.”

Read Ferrell’s best burns here.

Like Full Frontal has proven since its premiere a year ago, Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner felt not only necessary, but urgent. And, as Bee pointed out, she and her team can’t do their jobs without publications big and small that are dedicated to facts–no alternatives necessary.

“I think this is a show a lot of people were waiting for,” says correspondent Ashley Nicole Black. “I remember when I first got the job, so many women came up to me like, ‘I’ve been waiting for Sam to get her own show.’”

“The thing that Sam loves, and this is why correspondents exists on the show, is that she wants people to get out on the street,” Harkin continues. “She wants people to talk to people. It’s really important to her that we engage with the public, find out how they’re feel. And right now people have a lot of feels.”

Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner will air as a one-hour special on TBS at 10 p.m. (EST/PST), with an additional broadcast on Twitter at 11 p.m. EST

When you’ve got a great professional network, you hear about good opportunities before others do. When you need to get in touch with somebody important, you have no trouble getting a warm introduction. When you travel, you’ve often got a friendly contact who can show you around or help you find somewhere to stay.

But building a strong network is one thing, and keeping it strong is another. It’s true that maintaining these connections takes work, and many of us only put in the effort when we need something from our contacts—namely when we’re looking for a job. The good news is that you don’t actually have to work that hard to keep your network alive. In fact, one of the most effective networking methods only requires writing four emails every year.

Related: The Only Three Networking Emails You Need To Know How To Write

The Long-Form Email Your Career Has Been Missing

For the past eight years, I’ve sent quarterly personal updates. Every January, April, July, and October, I send out an email to about 200 or so of my friends and colleagues. It’s a mix of what I’m doing at work; where my side projects have taken me; interesting books, movies, and articles I’ve enjoyed; and personal things like travel, events, deciding to move, feelings about an election, and sometimes even relationship or dating info.

Here’s the thing, though: These updates aren’t short. My last one came out to around 1,200 words, plus photos, videos, and links. It’s taken me a long time to find the right balance between thoughtfulness, familiarity, and polish when putting an update together, and I still devote a good two to three hours toward putting each one together. But it’s been a powerful way to stay on good terms with people I care about and nurture relationships I value. And it’s been an especially useful asset during times of transition—while starting companies, moving cities, changing jobs, and so on.

I know some people might find this practice strange, onerous, or annoying. You might worry it would make you come across as fake, or could wind up feeling too much like a marketing campaign to be effective. Or maybe you’re just rolling your eyes at yet another millennial who evidently prefers to share personal information through a screen rather than make a phone call or have a face-to-face conversation. But here’s what I’d say in response:

People like getting these updates. Because I send them via MailChimp, I have the data to tell you that my list’s open rate averages about 60%, which is incredibly high as far as emails go. Only two or three people have unsubscribed over the many years I’ve been doing this, and when I’m behind schedule, I sometimes even get emails or texts from friends asking me when the next update is coming.

This doesn’t replace calls or face time. Every one of these relationships was built on the back of a lot of in-person time, and I still cherish the opportunities we have to be in each other’s company, or even just linked by video chat. But I realize, too, that my contacts and I all lead busy lives and don’t all live in the same area, so coordinating a time to connect in real time isn’t always possible. This update is like writing a letter, but at scale.

It seems like it’s becoming a trend. I’m not just this one, lone guy sending personal updates—at the moment, I’m also on the receiving end of at least three other personal update emails, send on a regular basis by people in my network. Each one a little different, reflecting the personalities and lifestyles of their authors. One of my closest friends is an early-stage startup founder, and I hadn’t realized the seed round of funding he’s been working on for months had closed until I read his update. Glad I spotted it in my inbox!

Seven Tips To Get You Started

If you’re intrigued enough to give this networking method a try, here’s what to do:

1. Figure out a cadence and stick to it. I do it quarterly. If you have a lot going on or would rather write shorter updates, perhaps monthly is the way to go. But if you’re worried about overloading people’s inboxes, a biannual schedule might be better.

2. Decide how you’ll add people to your list. This means setting a few ground rules to make sure you’re only contacting people who you actually care about and are valuable to you. My rules are that they can’t be someone I just met last quarter, and they should be someone I’d like to be friends with forever, not just for “right now.” It can be a nice courtesy to give people a heads-up to new additions before the next update goes out.

3. Don’t spam people. Make it easy for readers to stop receiving your updates, and let folks know up front that you won’t have any hard feelings if they unsubscribe.

4. Don’t be shy about promoting something that’s important to you. If you’re on the hunt for a new job, or looking for tips for your trip to Peru, don’t be shy about asking for help, advice, ideas, or connections. This is your update, and the people reading it care about you and want to help you!

5. Be humble, personal, and presentable. I’ve found that it’s really important to keep it real when writing updates. No one likes a braggart (or a humblebragger), so lay off the overenthusiastic tone. Imagine you’re throwing a house party. The vibe should be personal, and it should feel personal, but that doesn’t mean you don’t pick up all the socks and underwear you had lying all over the floor beforehand.

6. When in doubt, just start a conversation. Don’t overthink it. Your first few updates might feel awkward, and that’s okay. It takes time to find your voice and tone. All you’re really doing is conversing with people you already know. Ben Bechar’s work modeling and quantifying networks suggests that developing more connections between people in your network strengthens the overall community.

Related:How To Enlist Other People To Do Your Networking For You

So make introductions. Initiate discussions. Ask a question or bring up a topic, then start a smaller thread with the people to weigh in. As Becher explains, “the more you make yourself a bridge builder for others, the more they will value their relationship [with] you in return.” The more connected your readers are with each other, the more likely your update is talked about or brought up with someone who didn’t open it. You end up with more people keeping you top of mind for longer. “The stronger your community,” Becher adds, “the more you gain for the same amount of work.”

7. Include some visuals. Most emails people get are about work or trying to get you to buy something. Make yours more enjoyable by including a photo or video. Just like on Facebook, people like seeing pictures of their friends!

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has become the most expensive aviation hunt in history, yet the fate of the plane and the 239 people onboard has never been determined since it disappeared in 2014.

In an effort to prevent that from happening again, the carrier announced last week that it will be the first airline customer of a new service that will provide up-to-the-minute tracking of aircraft around the world, even when they’re far from land or otherwise out of range of traditional radar. The tracking system, provided by a company called Aireon, will allow airlines like Malaysia and air traffic controllers to receive a steady stream of aircraft position data wherever they are on earth—not from receivers on the ground, but from satellites.

“When aircraft fly over the oceans, over remote airspace, you would think we would have surveillance,” says Don Thoma, CEO of the McLean, Virginia-based company. But that’s simply not true for 70% of the planet, due to coverage limitations of current tracking technology, he says. Over oceans or polar regions, pilots must periodically radio their locations to air traffic controllers. “We will now provide the ability of air traffic control operations to see their aircraft wherever they operate,” says Thoma.

Currently, the lack of real-time location information also effectively limits how closely planes can fly and confines them to certain predictable routes. With more accurate data available across the globe, planes may ultimately be able to take more efficient flight paths, safely flying closer together, saving time and fuel, and cutting costs for airlines and passengers.

The system, still in development, is a joint venture with air traffic control providers in Canada, Ireland, Denmark, and Italy, who have invested a total of $243 million in the company, and satellite communications giant Iridium Communications, whose SpaceX-launched satellites will provide connectivity for the plane-tracking service.

Besides these navigation providers, Aireon hopes to provide service to other public and private navigation firms, as well as to airlines and other customers. This week, it announced it had completed a successful flight test with the FAA, setting the stage for use of the system in the U.S.

Aireon’s system is essentially a space-based extension of the next-generation air traffic control system known as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, or ADS-B. That technology, which will be installed in most of the world’s passenger aircraft within the decade and will be required on most planes in U.S. airspace as of 2020, automatically transmits a plane’s geographical coordinates every second, from transponders on board to receivers on the ground.

Fed in part by a global network of volunteer aviation geeks armed with receivers, the ADS-B network sends real-time aircraft location data to control towers and airlines across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and powers popular flight-tracking apps like FlightAware and FlightRadar24.

While ADS-B is more accurate than radar and delivers data closer to real time, it still requires that planes be in range of a receiver for accurate tracking. The Aireon system effectively removes that requirement by sending the ADS-B signal to receivers on Iridium’s satellites, which pass it on to air traffic controllers nearly instantaneously. Initially, the Aireon system will complement existing ground-based surveillance systems and provide a backup service in emergencies.

Still missing: The FAA

The immediate value of the system will be to ensure that disappearances like that of MH370 don’t happen again. In that instance, it’s still unclear whether the ADS-B transponder onboard the aircraft was intentionally disabled or malfunctioned. Traditionally, pilots have been able to disable most onboard systems including ADS-B for safety’s sake, though international regulations effective in 2021 will require that planes in distress automatically transmit their locations without the ability for a manual override.

Related: How Flight Tracking Apps Work: Volunteers

The FAA in particular is seen as a critical customer for both Aireon and, by extension, Iridium. In its most recent annual report, Iridium acknowledged that Aireon’s financial prospects are pegged to “the development of the market for a space-based ADS-B service among air navigation service providers, or ANSPs, particularly the FAA.” Last June, Iridium reported that Aireon would be late paying it $200 million in satellite fees, in part because some expected Aireon customers, including the FAA, had not yet committed to the service.

On Wednesday, that commitment seemed closer, as Aireon and the FAA announced a successful test of the system, part of the regulator’s efforts to assess the satellite system’s accuracy against land-based surveillance.

The test took place on March 30, using three Aireon payloads on the FAA’s specially equipped “flying laboratory” Bombardier jet. Vinny Capezzuto, chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Aireon, said the FAA flight test “was the ultimate validation accomplishment for the Aireon system to date.”

The U.S. aviation agency is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar upgrade to a system called “NextGen,” which is expected to harness ADS-B technology, as well as enhanced voice, data, and weather-monitoring tools. The FAA said last year that the program is on target for a scheduled launch by 2025, though it’s unclear how that might change under the Trump administration.

In response to a question about the company’s relationship with the FAA and NextGen, the company said, “Aireon greatly values our collaborative relationship with the FAA and we look forward to continue working together to push this application of NextGen technology forward and validating that it meets FAA performance requirements.”

Iridium’s Upgrade

The Aireon system is part of a push by Iridium into the burgeoning Internet of Things market, connecting equipment like trucks, offshore drilling platforms, and scientific instruments that need to send and receive data far from any cell-phone towers.

“With the new satellites, it’ll be faster speeds and lower costs,” says Iridium CEO Matt Desch. Whereas the company’s original constellation of “birds,” launched in the early 1990s, have a maximum data transfer rate of no more than 2.4 kilobits per second, the new satellites will provide data transfer rates of 1.4 megabits per second, or more than 500 times faster.

Amid a wave of new satellite upstarts, the Iridium CEO acknowledges the company is often most closely associated with satellite phone service, an offering the company debuted in the 1990s with a White House call from then Vice President Al Gore to a descendent of Alexander Graham Bell.

Soon after, though, the company filed for bankruptcy, in what at the time was one of the 20 largest bankruptcies in the country, amid $1.5 billion in debt from its initial satellite launches and a dearth of subscribers to its costly service. The company’s initial phones and service were expensive, and it was ultimately bought at a steep discount by a group of investors who targeted the service at customers who tend to be out of range of the then rapidly growing conventional cell-phone industry.

It’s since facilitated calls from sailors, remote oil-and-gas workers, scientists in the South Pole, and rescue workers operating in areas where natural disasters have knocked cell networks offline. Among more than 800,000 global subscribers, the U.S. government is the company’s largest customer, accounting for a quarter of revenue, with the Defense Department even operating a network gateway in Hawaii specifically to connect to Iridium’s systems, according to the company’s most recent annual report.

“We’re the only communication provider in the world that covers 100% of the planet,” says Desch.

The company is now in the midst of a $3 billion upgrade of its aging 66-satellite network, the first full-scale revamp since the company’s bankruptcy. The first 10 satellites in the new system, dubbed Iridium NEXT, arrived in space in January, delivered by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX is set to deliver the rest of the replacement satellites, plus a handful of backup units, over the course of this year and next.

Iridium is SpaceX’s largest private-sector customer, and Desch says he has confidence in the Elon Musk-headed company despite September’s launchpad explosion. Though the rocket wasn’t carrying any of Iridium’s satellites at the time, the explosion delayed the company’s plans by a few weeks, testing Desch’s patience.

As the satellites arrive in low-earth orbit, they’ll be maneuvered into place by engineers in Iridium’s offices in Leesburg, Virginia. If all goes well, the new satellites will be brought into service with no disruption to customer calls or data transmissions, and the previous-generation satellites—most of which are operating beyond their design lives—will be taken out of orbit to incinerate over the course of a year as they slowly descend through the Earth’s atmosphere.

“That’s kind of sad, because these things have been up there for 20 years,” Desch quips.

“We obviously have to make sure we don’t hit anybody else, including ourselves, because we don’t want to create more debris in space,” Desch says. (In 2009, one of Iridium’s satellites slammed into an out-of-service Russian satellite, dubbed Kosmos 2251, when the two satellites’ orbits intersected each other 490 miles above Siberia, as they traveled at a speed of 26,000 miles per hour.)

While the company continues to develop new voice features, like a global corporate network push-to-talk feature, data services are now the fastest growing segment of the business, Desch says. The company has no plans to deliver consumer home internet—“We don’t have enough spectrum for that,” Desch says—but plans to harness the new satellites’ increased bandwidth for data transmissions like the Aireon flight-tracking system.

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook have also spoken of providing high-speed data to hard-to-reach places via satellite, but those plans have yet to come to fruition, and other satellite phone providers like Globalstar and Inmarsat—which is developing its own aircraft-focused communications system—don’t claim quite the whole-earth coverage that Iridium advertises.

What Aireon’s system needs now, besides the new satellites, are more customers. Besides never losing a plane again, Thoma touts another benefit: Better tracking could mean dramatically more efficient routes, with the potential to save airlines more than $100 million on flights in the North Atlantic alone. According to an estimate by a researcher at Purdue University, real-time space-based tracking could reduce the amount of fuel that passenger aircraft crossing the North Atlantic burn by 284 million pounds a year. “We’ve been getting very good reception by the aviation industry on this,” he says.

Anthony Romero was the first one into the office in lower Manhattan on Wednesday, November 9, 2016. He had spent the prior night at an election party hosted by George Soros, one of the ACLU’s biggest donors—an event that, according to Romero, was “like being at a wedding that turned into a funeral.”

Like many Americans, Romero had woken up to a political reality he had not expected. But unlike most of the country, the executive director of the ACLU had a clear vision of what came next. It was, after all, a scenario for which he had been preparing for months.

First thing that morning, Romero sat at his desk, which looks out across the New York harbor with a sweeping view of the Statue of Liberty, and wrote a letter to then president-elect Donald Trump. In it, he laid out several of Trump’s campaign promises—deportation forces to remove undocumented immigrants, a entry ban for Muslims, and restrictions on a woman’s right to abortion, among them—and succinctly explained how they violate the Constitution.

The ACLU had already planned an all-staff meeting for that morning, to be held near the nonprofit’s offices in the amphitheater of the National Museum of the American Indian.All of the ACLU’s roughly 300 New York City-based employees were invited, including 110 legal staffers, along with people working in development, advocacy, and communications. The 900-some employees from the organization’s 53 state affiliate offices (including three in California) were invited to call in.

Romero, who has led the ACLU for 16 years, acknowledged his employees’ disappointment and let them express it.But he didn’t let them linger on it. “This is what we are here for,” he reminded them. “We will get tested, and we will sometimes lose, but we will always be in the fight for the right reasons.” 

After the meeting, he handed his letter to ACLU communications director Michele Moore, who had started earlier in the year with the directive to help make the 97-year-old nonprofit relevant again. Romero didn’t want the letter edited or toned down. He told Moore to just run with it. Two days later, Romero’s early-morning missive appeared as a full-page ad in the New York Times.

In the nearly six months since election night, the ACLU has fulfilled Romero’s promise, mounting some of the most prominent legal challenges to the Trump administration and becoming a de facto leader of what’s become known as “the resistance.” The organization and its affiliates have launched more than a dozen legal actions and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests against the Trump administration. They’ve scored victories against both of the administration’s executive orders limiting the ability of people from some predominantly Muslim countries to enter the country (aka the travel bans), and recently joined with the County of Santa Clara in its successful suit to oppose the defunding of sanctuary cities. And they’ve ratcheted up the pressure in smaller ways, such as publishing a slew of documents relating President Trump’s business interests, obtained by a FOIA request. At the same time, the nonprofit has continued to pursue other civil-rights cases at state and national levels, which include battles for trans bathroom rights and various challenges to restrictions on reproductive freedom.

The ACLU was founded by a group of activists in the 1920s, when protesters were routinely thrown in jail for actions as benign as distributing anti-war literature. It was a time when states openly allowed violence and discrimination against African-Americans, when women had only just won the right to vote, and when LGBT people enjoyed absolutely no constitutional protections. 

The landscape of American freedom looks vastly different now, thanks in part to the ACLU’s work on cases like Brown v. Board of Education to help end school segregation; Loving v. Virginia, which established lawful interracial marriage; and Roe v. Wade, confirming a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. More recently, the ACLU has taken on government surveillance and torture, and helped secure the right of gay couples to legally marry with the landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court victory.

But the ACLU’s influence and profile today may be unmatched in its history, as the nonprofit mobilizes Americans to aid its efforts like never before. In his 16 years as executive director, Romero has doubled the organization’s size and budget. But that progress has skyrocketed since election day. Over the past six months, the number of card-carrying ACLU members has quadrupled from around 400,000 to 1.6 million, and more than $83 million in donations has flooded in—much of it from individuals donating online. That’s more than one-third of the ACLU’s annual budget. (The nonprofit has seen so much financial support that Romero has even urged donors not to forget other organizations in need.) The organization that this time last year was trying to figure out how to stay relevant is now the pet cause for celebrities and Silicon Valley luminaries, including Y Combinator president Sam Altman, who recently pledged the support of his high-profile startup accelerator. 

The ACLU has responded by hiring and expanding and improving its operations, including creating its first-ever grassroots organizing arm. “Government has turned its back on the people, and the ACLU is leading the charge in saying, ‘We are here to listen, and we are here to be a part of a strategic plan,’” says Mark Rosenbaum, who spent 40 years at the ACLU’s Southern California chapter before becoming director of the Opportunity Under Law division of the pro bono law firmPublic Counsel. “They are developing strategies and policies that are responsive to the real needs that are being voiced.”

This is all possible because the ACLU—under Anthony Romero—was ready for the president whom it calls “a one-man constitutional crisis.”

America’s Insurance Policy

More than six months before the media and much of the American public was blindsided by the election results, the ACLU was preparing for a Trump presidency. In May 2016, as Bernie Sanders conceded the Democratic primary and Trump secured enough delegates to claim the Republican primary, Romero directed his staff to begin compiling detailed reports on what, exactly, a Clinton and Trump presidency would mean for civil liberties and constitutional rights.

The ACLU is organized into 14 different project groups, each focused on a major issue, such as voting rights, criminal justice, surveillance, and immigration. Within each group, there are subgroups for specific topics, like detention or refugees. At any given time, the ACLU may be working on roughly 66 different subjects. For the candidate dossiers, Romero asked each project group to consider the politician through the lens of its issue.

For the Clinton report, the task was relatively simple. The teams had decades of Clinton policy statements to draw from, and they looked at what the appointment of a moderate Supreme Court nominee might mean for issues such as the death penalty and stop and frisk.

Building a detailed report on Trump was much more daunting—and unpopular. Romero concedes that some of the staff, already burdened with the pressure to wrap up pending litigation against the Obama administration, likely viewed it as “Anthony’s vanity project.” But he pushed forward. “Everyone was talking about Clinton, Clinton, Clinton. We had a Clinton plan and we were thinking about the transition, but we had to have a Trump plan because if he was to be elected, the challenges would have been too great to just [address] on the fly,” Romero explains when I meet him at his offices in early March.

To pull together the report, the ACLU hired an outside research firm and culled through all of Trump’s statements. “Then I said to the litigators, ‘Give me the best constitutional legal statutory analysis you would muster to fight these policies,’” Romero recalls.

The ACLU published “The Trump Memos” on July 13, 2016. (Since Clinton didn’t pose nearly as serious of a constitutional threat, the ACLU didn’t publish its memo on her until October.) The 27-page document took all of candidate Trump’s campaign rhetoric on six big issues (immigration, actions against Muslims, torture, libel, mass surveillance, and abortion) literally and seriously, drawing out his often vague or incoherent statements to their possible policy positions. Then it built a clear defense against each. “We had to take him at his word,” explains Moore. “So if he was talking about mass deportation forces, [we thought,] what does that mean in terms of [the] right to due process?” The ACLU had no way of knowing if or when the president would try to fulfill his campaign promises, but it created the backbone for its legal arguments just in case.

Today, the document reads like a detailed playbook for Trump’s first 100 days, and likely beyond. For example, the July memo explained that Trump’s own inflammatory campaign trail rhetoric against Muslims could be used to undermine any attempt at a country-based travel ban: “To the extent that Trump’s proposed ban has shifted from an explicit religion-based ban to a pretextual country-based ban, it remains unmistakably clear from the history of this proposal and the continuing focus on Muslims in public statements from the Trump campaign that the target continues to be adherents of a particular faith. The Constitution does not tolerate such discrimination.” This is the very argument that would help win over the Ninth Circuit judges more than six months later.

Why did Romero prepare for an outcome that everyone thought was unlikely? He says it’s just in his nature. “I have plan A, plan B, and plan C, and then I have to come up with plan D on the spot,” he explains. “We were the only nonprofit that put out a report on Trump. Our job was to be ready for the worst-case scenario.”

Being at the vanguard isn’t new for Romero. He has often filled the role of first: He is the first Latino and openly gay man to lead the ACLU, and was the first person in his family to graduate from high school. Born to immigrant parents from Puerto Rico, he spent his early childhood in public housing in the Bronx. He understood, at an young age, the hurdles that immigrants face: During Romero’s childhood, his father filed a grievance against the hotel he worked for when he was denied a promotion because of his limited English. Romero went on to Princeton, where he studied public and international affairs, and then Stanford law school.

After law school, he applied for a fellowship at the ACLU, but was turned down. He wound up at the Rockefeller Foundation, where he established himself as a civil-rights advocate. From there he took a position in the Civil Rights and Social Justice division of the Ford Foundation, where he became one of the youngest directors in the foundation’s history. It was there that he honed the fundraising skills that have been such a boon to the ACLU.

Romero became executive director of the ACLU one week before the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks. “I hadn’t even unpacked my boxes yet, or gotten business cards,” he recalls. “It really required me to put my arms around the place and provide the leadership that the organization needed and that the country required.”  

While Romero anticipated that the attacks might lead to increased nationalism and an erosion of civil liberties (similar to what happened in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack), he decided to begin by addressing the country’s mood. His first press release, issued on September 20, took a decidedly patriotic tone, pledging that the ACLU would “work with our national leaders in their fight to bring those responsible for this tragedy to justice.” 

Not all of his colleagues agreed with this approach. “Some people [within the ACLU] thought I was too nationalistic,” Romero says. “[But] you have to meet the client where they are. And our client, the American people, were grieving and stunned and afraid. [I said to the staff], we have to make sure that the public is ready to hear us. As soon as the Bush administration began to enact the Patriot Act ordetain and deport immigrants, that’s when we were really at full throttle.”

Today, Romeroviews the ACLU as the U.S.’s insurance policy. Under his leadership, it has become an institution that prepares silently in the background and pushes forward as the need arises. Since Romero took the helm, his lawyers have battled cases both big (the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 2010; marriage equality in 2015) and lesser-known, and have challenged presidents, whether it was over George W. Bush’s mass surveillance efforts or the Obama administration’s deportations and use of drones in battle. And although the public might not have been interested in “The Trump Memos” last summer (“I think two people read it,” Romero jokes), the ACLU did its due diligence, just in case.  

Winning In The Streets And In The Courtroom

On January 27, 2017, after less than a week in office, Trump signed the executive order that colloquially became known as the Muslim Ban. The order, which barred entry for people from seven Muslim-majority countries, regardless of their immigration status, was issued just before 5 p.m. on a Friday. It was timed, in other words, to surprise.

The immigration lawyers at the ACLU didn’t know that the order would come down that evening, but they did have advanced warning: According to Romero, someone within the White House had leaked a photocopied draft to the ACLU a few days earlier, and the organization had begun to map out its case. “We had figured out all the legal theories already,” Romero says. “We just needed to plug in clients.”

Two hours after the order was signed, Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, and his colleagues were on the phone with partner organizations, including the National Immigration Law Center and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). A couple hours later, lawyers with IRAP told Gelernt that two men from Iraq who had worked for the U.S. government were being detained at JFK airport; they would become the main plaintiffs in the case against the government. Gelernt and the others worked in shifts through the night and filed a habeas corpus lawsuit on behalf of their clients—and anyone else caught by the ban—in federal court just before 6 a.m. on Saturday, less than 12 hours after the order was issued.

As planes landed throughout the country, stories of people being detained began to proliferate. Gelernt had hoped for a fast response to their filing, but as the morning wore on, it became clear that they wouldn’t get a hearing that day. So Gelernt and his team quickly changed course: They needed someone to issue a temporary, emergency national stay on the executive order. Again they scrambled, working through the afternoon to file papers by 5 p.m. that Saturday. A half hour later, they reached a New York federal court judge, who told Gelernt to get lawyers from both sides to the Brooklyn courtroom in two hours.

By this time, crowds were halting traffic at airports, and the chaos surrounding the executive order had become the biggest national story. Gelernt quickly showered and headed down to Brooklyn. As he, Romero, the government lawyers, and a few activists filed into the courtroom, a small crowd started to gather outside.

The hearing began with a tense sense of urgency. Gelernt was handed a piece of paper from another lawyer: One of his clients was being put on a plane back to Syria in 25 minutes. According to Gelernt, the judge asked the Justice Department attorneys two questions: Would the individuals who are being deported and detained be a threat to national security if they were allowed to stay?And if we send these people back, are they going to be in harm’s way? The answers, apparently, were insufficient. The judge issued a nationwide injunction to block the deportation of people stranded by the executive order. The room erupted in cheers—something that never happens in federal court, says Gelernt.

Moments later, Romero and Gelernt exited the courthouse. “In my mind, [I thought] there were going to be maybe 40 people out there,” Gelernt says. The crowd that had gathered was estimated at 1,000 people. Reporters swarmed the lawyers. Phones went up to record; people were shushed. A shaky video of Romero and Gelernt explaining the court order was quickly posted on the ACLU’s Facebook page, where it now has more than 19 million views. The crowd started to chant “ACLU, thank you!” and high-fiving the lawyers.

Donations to the ACLU had started pouring in the day after the election, and thousands of people had carried ACLU-branded signs at the Women’s March on January 21. But it was outside that Brooklyn courthouse that the nonprofit solidified its position as a leader of the resistance. Over the course of that final weekend in January, the ACLU took in an unprecedented $24 million in online donations from roughly 350,000 people. Silicon Valley heavy hitters also got involved: Lyft pledged $1 million over four years and many other companies, including Instacart, Slack, and Google, pledged to match employee donations.  

Related: How The Tech Industry Is Helping The ACLU Fill Its War Chest

“[The ACLU has] always been fighting the fight, but they have often been invisible,” says Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which often aligns with the ACLU’s reproductive rights team. “What’s new is that their legal work provides not just an opportunity to make sure that rights are maintained, but [it has become] a symbol of hope in very difficult times.”

The dramatic success of those 24 hours isn’t how the ACLU wins most of its cases, but it is indicative of how the organization works: a mix of careful planning, remarkable speed, and increasing agility. Its power and reach come not only from a strong core of specialized lawyers, but also a robust network of partner organizations and affiliate offices that allows the nonprofit to have meticulously planned cases that can be amended on the fly.

It’s where Romero’s plan A, B, C, and improvised plan D come into play. “[Anthony] thrives on these moments and gets energized by them,” says Gelernt. “He is very good at providing a broad-strokes narrative for the organization, but then letting the lawyers do their work and not micromanaging.”

A key part of this effort is the ACLU’s increasing reliance on its affiliates. Many of the organization’s legal battles are started and even won on a state level, which is why Romero has invested so heavily in building out these state offices. An important recent case for transgender rights, for example, began in Virginia with Gavin Grimm, a local high school student who wasn’t allowed to use the boy’s bathroom. (In March, the Supreme Court kicked that case back down to a lower court, where it has yet to be heard.) 

This distribution of work ensures that the ACLU can function with relative ease, even at times when it should be highly stressful. I met with Romero just hours after the second immigration ban was announced, on March 6, but he wasn’t rushed, even when casually speaking of his grueling schedule.

The reason for his calm? The ACLU didn’t have to scramble to file new lawsuits or find clients when the order came down; it already had 15 legal actions in process in several states. The case that would overturn the second version of the immigration ban just nine days later—a suit filed in Maryland—was one that the ACLU had set in motion back in January.

Romero sees this strategy as particularly important, given the multi-pronged challenges he is facing. “We can have one precious,perfect little case with the best clients, filed in the right jurisdiction, [but] I don’t think that would be the right strategy for us. I think the right strategy for us is to file as many of these lawsuits as we possibly can.”

Despite the ACLU’s growth and its attack-from-all-angles strategy, the nonprofit is still astonishingly outnumbered. The government has more than 19,000 lawyers to the ACLU’s 300. And no amount of online donations is going to boost the organization’s ranks to make it a fair fight—which is why the ACLU is now betting heavily on the court of public opinion.

Keeping Up Momentum

There’s no doubt the ACLU is having a moment. Romero’s job is to keep it going. At this year’s TED conference in Vancouver, he gave a rousing 15-minute speech on the importance of civic involvement, and received a standing ovation. He’s a confident public speaker, used to selling the importance of the ACLU’s mission, but his talk last week took the fiery tone of a leader whose organization depends on sustained public outrage. Referencing Silicon Valley’s obsession with disruption, Romero told the audience, “We have to disrupt our lives so that we can disrupt the amoral accretion of power by those who would betray our values. ‘We’ in ‘We the people’ must raise justice up, and must bring peace to our nation.”

Romero’s speech reflects a new emphasis on mobilizing members. It has become increasingly clear over the past six months that those hundreds of thousands of people who have recently joined the ACLU want to do more than just give money. “We’ve got [members] who really want to be put to work,” Romero says. “We have a responsibility to help them figure out how to make a difference.”

To mobilize public interest, Romero enlisted Faiz Shakir, a founding member and former editor-in-chief of the political news website ThinkProgress.org, who most recently served as a senior adviser to former Senator Harry Reid. Shakir assumed the role of national political director for the ACLU on inauguration day, and immediately set to work developing a grassroots-organizing arm. “I said to [Romero], ‘People are voting with their pocketbooks and email addresses,’” Shakir recalls. “[They’re saying,] tag, you’re it. You’re the leader of the resistance.”

Related: How The ACLU Is Evolving To Fight Trump In Streets–Not Just The Courtroom

In March, Shakir helped launch People Power, an online destination that offers citizens (whether or not they are ACLU members) resources for political engagement and advice on how to self-organize protests and rallies. Buoyed by the success of the Women’s March and other protests (including those at the airports during the travel ban), the ACLU hopes that its supporters will take further action to support its causes. People Power debuted with a live-streamed “town hall,” which offered the 200,000 people who had gathered at house parties around the country a basic understanding of their rights while protesting and initial ideas for action.

In Shakir’s vision, the ACLU’s grassroots citizen activists will create town halls, lobby lawmakers, and organize protests, supplementing what he refers to as the “grass-top activities” of the ACLU affiliates: working with legislators, governors, business leaders, and other influential people. The ACLU is so invested in this new experiment that it is dedicating a planned $13 million over the next year to build People Power.  

Public Council’s Rosenbaum credits Romero’s leadership for allowing the ACLU to seize this moment in history. “For a long time [the ACLU] won major cases that raised important issues,” he says. “That’s valuable, but it’s not the same thing as having a core vision and mission and executing and expanding it, and Anthony has done that. [Today] the ACLU is outsmarting and outmobilizing the government, whether it’s in the courts, legislative branches, or with grassroots organizing.”

Still, in this heated political climate, adopting high-profile stances and encouraging the public to take up causes in the organization’s name carry a certain amount of risk. The ACLU’s Washington, D.C.-based foundation, which is eligible to accept tax-deductible donations from individuals, corporations, and other charities, is prohibited from engaging too much in politics by its 501(c)3 status. The foundation funds the ACLU’s legal work, which supports the Constitution above all political parties or candidates. The nonprofit’s lobbying and organizing efforts, however, are paid for by the ACLU’s social-welfare entity, which relies on membership dollars that are not eligible for charitable-contribution deductions. The ACLU is careful to keep its two entities separate, but critics in the past have questioned its tax-exempt status. 

The infusion of cash across the political spectrum has given the organization the opportunity to hire and expand beyond its People Power efforts. Two days before the president took the oath of office, Romero announced his seven-point plan for the next four years, which includes an increased focus on immigrant, reproductive, and LGBT rights.

To accomplish this, he says the ACLU will need an additional $100 million above the organization’s $220 million annual budget. The largest chunk of money, more than $40 million, will be used to create 100 new staff positions in affiliate offices, earmarked especially for states with large populations that often bring forward cases impacting national policy, such as Texas, Florida, and Ohio. The New York City-based national office will expand, adding around 90 staff positions via an infusion of $21 million.

The 97-year-old organization is also overhauling its digital tools and investing in its communications efforts, both of which have become priorities as public interest surges. “Our tech needs are woefully underresourced and underdeveloped,” Romero admits. “We have this massive flood of new [members], and I can’t even tell you the basic demographics. What was working fine for a membership of 400,000 people is not working for 1.6 million.” 

Silicon Valley is lending a hand: The ACLU recently joined Y Combinator’s accelerator program, and now has the support of many of the engineers and business leaders associated with the incubator. (Romero says they are still identifying what projects to have them work on.) “We need leaders like [Romero] now more than ever,” says Altman, “and we wanted to play a small part in supporting his work.”

Romero is realistic that this time of rapid growth is likely to breed its share of failures. “We are definitely reengineering the place as we’re flying it,” he says, sounding remarkably like a startup founder. “Some things are going to work great, and some things aren’t.” That acceptance of the inevitability of failure helps him take the long view of the ACLU’s success.

He likens the ACLU to long-distance runners who have trained assiduously for this administration. “You’re building muscle for the marathon that you need to run,” he says. “We were building muscle in the Obama years that we’re putting to use now. We’re always laying the groundwork for that next moment, that next flashpoint, the next inflection point that really does test you.” And these days, that next inflection point may be right around the corner, ready to land on Romero’s desk at 5 p.m. on a Friday evening.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the ACLU’s membership had tripled since the election. It has quadrupled.