If you look at the tags inside your clothing, you’ll often see “rayon” or “viscose.” An increasingly popular fabric–production has doubled in the past decade–these man-made cellulosic fibers are versatile, with a beautiful drape, and a soft and silky feel. They’re also often marketed as more eco-friendly, since they’re made from plant materials instead of plastics like polyester or nylon.
But rayon, viscose, and modal have a dark secret: They’re often made from old-growth trees from endangered rainforests.
“Most people know the link between forests and paper, but they don’t know the link between forest ecosystems and the clothing they have in their wardrobes,” says Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of the Vancouver-based nonprofit Canopy, which works with businesses who source trees as a raw material to come up with solutions that protect old-growth forests. An Ashoka fellow, Rycroft has turned her organization’s gaze over the past five years from the paper industry to the fashion industry.
“All of the brands have been shocked. Some of them weren’t even aware that rayon actually came from forests.” [Photo: Andrew Wright/courtesy Canopy]“To be honest, even we were surprised when we found out about the link,” she says. “All of the brands have been shocked. Some of them weren’t even aware that rayon actually came from forests.” The big brands who did know, assumed that it was coming from sustainable, second-growth forests, which turned out to be far from true.
Here’s how trees are turned into fashion: A dissolving pulp mill situated near a forest or tree plantation takes a tree, adds chemicals, and produces what’s called dissolving pulp. The pulp goes to the viscose producer, who makes it into a staple fiber, which is then sent to a dyer or spinner. Next it’s made into a textile, which is sold to fashion brands. It finally lands as a ruffled blouse or sheath dress in your favorite store.
“We have these carbon-rich forests being converted, and as a result climate change is being exacerbated and we’re losing critical habitat for vulnerable species.” [Photo: Crossover Productions/courtesy Canopy]“Viscose is a very chemically intensive, nasty, toxic process,” Rycroft says. “It’s also very inefficient. You lose about 60% of the tree through that chemical breakdown.”
Dissolving pulp mills are located all over the world, in Austria, Sweden, South Africa, China, India, even Minnesota. But the most controversial mills source their trees from Canada’s boreal forest, Indonesia’s rainforest, and the Amazon. “We have these carbon-rich forests being converted, and as a result climate change is being exacerbated and we’re losing critical habitat for vulnerable species,” Rycroft says. “It is the palm oil of the fashion world.”
One particularly controversial pulp mill in Northern Sumatra is located in the middle of a forest that is home to sun bears and tigers, plus communities of native farmers. Up until Canopy got involved, the mill was (with the blessing of the government) logging this ecologically valuable forest and converting it to eucalyptus plantations. One farmer who tried to protect his land by standing in the way of bulldozers was thrown in jail for three months.
“Rayon is the palm oil of the fashion world.” [Photo: Nicole Rycroft/courtesy Canopy]The viscose rayon industry is slated to double again in capacity over the next decade, meaning more dissolving pulp mills will be built to handle the growing demand. Fortunately, this might be a rare opportunity to stop an environmental disaster before it becomes entrenched as business-as-usual.
Canopy takes a three-prong approach to this mission. They engage with corporate fashion brands, whose buyers can pressure rayon viscose suppliers. Every six months, Canopy updates their ranking of rayon producers according to environmental performance, so brands can go into contract negotiations armed with information on sustainability practices. Canopy also engages with rayon viscose suppliers, who can put pressure on dissolving pulp mills. And they engage the pulp mills themselves, using pressure from up the supply chain to essentially give them no choice but to comply, or lose almost all their customers.
So far, Canopy has won commitments to go rainforest-free from 105 fashion brands representing $130 billion in annual revenue, or 5% of the $2.4 trillion global fashion market. In the spring they announced a rainforest-free commitment from VF Corp, with yearly sales of over $12 billion, and whose brands include Nautica, the North Face, Wrangler, Timberland, and Vans. They recently announced a commitment from Gap Inc., which owns Banana Republic and Old Navy, to be old-growth-tree-free by 2020.
“The supply chain is transforming in real time.” [Photo: Andrew Wright/courtesy Canopy]Canopy also has commitments from 10 rayon suppliers, representing 75% of the global market. “There are very few dissolving pulp mills that are going to want to rule out the ability to supply to 75% of their customers,” Rycroft says. Most of these rayon suppliers have also committed to drawing on non-tree sources, such as recycled fabrics or agricultural waste. The two largest global suppliers of rayon, Lenzing and Aditya Brila, have also gone through the auditing process put together by Canopy and The Rainforest Alliance, which means 25% of the global rayon viscose market has been certified as at low risk for sourcing from endangered forests.
That mill in Northern Sumatra? Because of pressure from Canopy and rayon producers, it has put in place a zero-deforestation commitment, and has agreed give back 12,800 acres of forest to the local communities. The mill will work with the government to find land to source from that is not old-growth or inhabited by a native community.
Fashion companies aren’t moving on this issue because of consumer pressure–most consumers have no idea that fabric can even be made from trees. The brands that have signed on either see it as crucial to their broader sustainability initiatives, or are looking ahead to the point when governments implement cap-and-trade or carbon taxes to comply with the Paris climate accords. They’re also wary of bad press as consumers become more aware. It’s about risk mitigation.
“The supply chain is transforming in real time,” Rycroft says. “I think that’s one of the encouraging things about the fashion industry around sustainability. With a clear strategy, with clear tools, with very clear metrics and outcomes, it’s a powerful example of the impact that collective action can really have.”
Alden Wicker is a freelance journalist covering sustainability and fashion.
Last month the space agency had asked social media users to compose an uplifting #MessageToVoyager in honor of the spacecraft’s 40th anniversary. NASA has now selected the winning message and it’s been beamed off to rendezvous with Voyage 1, reports Recode. The tweet was written by Oliver Jenkins and said, “We offer friendship across the stars. You are not alone.” The tweet got a star-studded send-off before being beamed into the cosmos via a public reading by Star Trek legend William Shatner. And although Voyager 1 is now 10 billion miles away from Earth, the tweet will only take 19 hours to arrive.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has been unsuccessful in getting its Do Not Disturb accepted in the App Store. The software would allow users to share spam calls and text messages with the agency, which would then use the data to block spammers from mobile networks, reports Bloomberg. However, Apple says the app violates its privacy policies, so won’t approve it. It’s a move that could cause serious headaches for Apple–and reveals just how strict the company is at approving apps.
For a while now Apple has been trying to increase its foothold in the smartphone marketplace in India by opening retail stores there and being granted permission to sell used iPhones imported into the country. Surely shutting out a government app aimed at protecting Indian consumers isn’t going to endear anyone in the government to Apple’s plight. As Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman of the telecom regulator, said, “Nobody’s asking Apple to violate its privacy policy. It is a ridiculous situation–no company can be allowed to be the guardian of a user’s data.”
The Category 5 hurricane is the strongest on record in the Atlantic Ocean, reports Mother Jones. It’s currently over the Caribbean and is expected to make landfall in Florida by the weekend.
How much damage do Category 5 winds do compared to Category 1 winds? There’s a visualization for that (and it’s not pretty) pic.twitter.com/GaO3jbp2QE
Nonprofit boards seem to be more eager than in years past to advocate on behalf of the organizations they represent. But who exactly is doing that lobbying, which can set standards for how social missions are structured and who in the community becomes involved, is still troubling–as in, everyone is white.
That’s two of the key findings in Leading with Intent, a new report about board compensation, practices, and performance and culture by BoardSource, a nonprofit working to improve governance within the sector.
When BoardSource surveyed over 1,750 executives within the industry, it found that 90% all nonprofit CEOs are white, as are 84% of board members. That’s up from its 2015 findings, which were 89% and 80% respectively. Overall, within that time frame the total number of all-white boards rose too, from 25% to 27%, despite the fact that many leaders are clearly dissatisfied with the imbalance.
On top of that, many boards aren’t involved enough, leaving them ignorant of the ways a group may be trying to improve its effectiveness or what they can do to help. That ignorance can be compounded if everyone already shares the same perspective, something the industry has taken to calling its “privilege problem.”
“It’s just really, really clear that, when it comes to more diversity, we’re stuck,” says BoardSource CEO Anne Wallestad. “The issue here is that despite what boards and executives are saying about the importance of diversity for their organizations mission and work, they are not prioritizing diversity in their board recruitment practices. And so there’s a real dissonance there between values and words, and actions and tangible work.”
As Fast Company has reported, many organizations are upset about the lack diversity throughout all levels of this sector, along with the continued hiring practices that obviously perpetuate it. In fact, a recent employment study shows that may be part of the reason that social enterprises are sucking up an increasing amount of nonprofit talent. People don’t want to work where they don’t feel welcome.
To that end, at 65% of CEOs and 41% of board members reported being somewhat or extremely dissatisfied with their board’s racial and ethnic diversity but only 20% considered it a top priority to actually fix it. “If you have a board that is homogeneous, that is kind of universally privileged, that has limited exposure or understanding of the communities that you’re serving, that’s a real problem,” says Wallestad.
At the same time, all leaders ranked fund-raising, outreach, and ambassadorship, and building a pipeline for future leaders on the board as the places where they could most improve.
One of the most interesting findings, Wallestad notes, is that board members who take time to socialize at meetings or during an annual retreat report feeling more like a collaborative team with a shared goal. Conversely, three times as many board members who didn’t structure in time to connect with their fellow board members felt an obvious lack of collaboration.
“That might sound silly to some, but the importance that the board actually having time to get to know each other and to build that ability to work well as a team . . . it really mattered,” Wallestad says.
The group’s true goal in commissioning the study was not just to point out what’s wrong, but to set groups on a path to fix it. So the report concluded with a series of questions for leaders to gauge whether they have the right understanding of their own group mission and all of the potential ways they might boost or hinder diversity, inclusion, a strong work culture, and, ultimately, more societal success.
“Of the board chairs who said that their board had a negative impact on organizational performance, 67% of them said that the board also had a weak understanding of the board’s roles and responsibility,” she says. Most who claimed to really understand the job felt like they were able to make a positive impact.
Yes, that’s as scary as it sounds. The accumulated cyclone energy (or ACE) is a measurement of the combined wind energy a storm has during a set time period. Irma has now broken the 24-hour ACE record, previously held by Hurricane Allen back in 1980. Irma is now a Category 5 hurricane and its winds could cause virtually unparalleled damage over the course of its path.
#Irma has just set the Atlantic record for Accumulated Cyclone Energy generated in a 24-hr period, breaking old record set by Allen (1980). pic.twitter.com/E8wForI0o1
In the five years since Ellen Pao filed her high-profile sex discrimination lawsuit against VC powerhouse Kleiner Perkins—and was later pressured to resign as CEO of Reddit after backlash from users—the conversation about gender inequality in tech has only gotten louder. In her new memoir, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, out September 19, Pao (now a partner at social impact–focused investment firm Kapor Capital) reveals what it was like to endure years of workplace sexism and have her professional and personal life scrutinized in a public trial—and why she’s still working to make Silicon Valley a more inclusive place.
Fast Company: It’s been a difficult but somewhat validating year for women in Silicon Valley, with revelations of sexual harassment and bias contributing to the departure of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, not to mention several high-powered venture capitalists. Do you feel at all vindicated?
Ellen Pao: I’m hopeful for change. I also feel sad that it has taken so much time and so many people speaking up and being ignored until finally it’s come to this point. My hope is that people actually do the right things and put in the changes that are going to make a difference.
FC: Why has it taken so long for tech as an industry to acknowledge that it has a problem? Do you think companies are only addressing the topic in public now because they’re being forced to?
EP: It seems that way, doesn’t it? It’s hard to say, because it’s early yet. You can see Uber taking steps, but they were backed into a corner. When it looked like people were going to make money, [the company was] comfortable with whatever was going on. The board wasn’t holding anybody accountable, none of the investors were holding anybody accountable. At any of these companies. And the employees weren’t getting the help they needed from HR or management, and [so] people started speaking out on their own. And that seems to be finally making a difference. We have seen for the first time people at investment firms being pushed out [for sexual harassment]. But whether [this trend] is short term or long term remains to be seen.
FC: In your book, you talk about trying to heed Sheryl Sandberg’s famous advice to take a seat at the table while you were on a private jet with male colleagues from Kleiner Perkins who insisted on having crude conversations. You concluded that taking a seat at the table isn’t possible when no one wants you there—a feeling that many women can relate to. What’s the best recourse?
EP: When you’re in that entry-level job, you’re like a commodity. One of the lawyers I used to work for called us pork bellies. One of you is like any other, and it doesn’t matter what you look like. But [as the field] starts to get more competitive, then it starts to matter for some reason what you look like or where you’re from. I wish there was a blanket right answer [for how to address the problem], but it’s much harder than that. Because, for some people, they need that job. For those people, [I’d say,] figure out if there is a different manager you can work for, a different location that you can go to, try to find the people who are more inclusive. If you can get another job, there are companies that may be more inclusive.
FC: What about speaking out—and taking legal action—as you did? Your suit against Kleiner Perkins dragged on for almost three years, and resulted in a judgment in favor of your former employer and you being ordered to pay part of their legal fees. What advice would you give to women now who are in the position that you were in then?
EP: I would say not to do it. It takes a tremendous toll on you as an individual. You just can’t imagine how hard it is, emotionally, financially, and professionally.
Ellen Pao and her legal team speak to the press at the conclusion of her lawsuit in March 2015. [Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times/Redux]FC: Is the legal system failing women? And if so, is winning in the court of public opinion, like Susan Fowler did, after writing a blog post describing the sexual harassment she endured at Uber, becoming more effective?
EP: Yeah, I think [the legal system] is failing women. I think it’s failing people of color, employees who are older. It’s not a great place to try to work out your problems because the company will be able to out-lawyer you, out-PR you, and drag things out and make things expensive and painful for you. I see it as a place of last resort. [Speaking out publicly] is going to be how you influence the managers, CEOs, VCs, board members. That ends up causing change. In the past, the press has not been so easy to work with. [But] a lot of these male reporters are now much more open and understand the issues a lot better.
I think the fact that I lost was validating for some people who had never complained and maybe had an opportunity to litigate and decided not to. They could see that the legal system is not actually a good place to try to resolve these issues. I think it helped some people come to terms with the fact that they didn’t push as hard as maybe they could have because they saw that actually it is not a fruitful path.
FC: Why do you think it’s so difficult for the general public to believe women when they say that they’ve been mistreated or discriminated against?
EP: Some people [think] that we moved past all this in the ’80s and ’90s. They thought we had resolved all of these issues, and it’s a shock to them that this kind of behavior thrives. And I think some people just don’t want to believe. And then there is a set of people who really don’t think there’s a problem with the behavior, a bigger set than I could possibly have imagined. The election, the behavior of people post-election, the behavior we knew about pre-election and that still got voted in—all of that was a shock to me.
FC: After you took over as interim CEO of Reddit in 2013, you banned revenge porn and unauthorized nude photos, which users largely supported. But when you tried to limit harassment on the site, you received a flood of abuse and online threats. Why?
EP: Five subreddits [featured] coordinated, targeted harassment of individuals. There was racism. One was transgender-phobic. One was fat-phobic. So we took down those five sites, and that was when the backlash happened. These subreddits became part of a crusade around free speech.
FC: This debate about the limits of free speech is still very much alive in the tech world. What obligation do social media sites have to protect users?
EP: There is no way you should allow targeted harassment on your site. Encouraging a variety of views is often what free speech advocates [want]. But bullying people [through] fear tactics shouldn’t be allowed. You could have one vocal group that just harasses every other group off your platform and so you’d have one perspective instead of hundreds of thousands. So when you talk about a free speech platform, part of it is having different perspectives, and that’s not possible if groups are allowed to harass other groups off the platform. If [Reddit] had wanted to go the way of unauthorized nude pictures, [it] could be the site where you could go all day to find nude pictures of your favorite celebrity and could push off all other activity. Would that be a good thing for Reddit? Probably not.
FC: So many leaders at otherwise visionary tech companies seem really stymied when it comes to ending harassment on their platforms. Is it really that difficult?
EP: It’s complicated. Just taking [hateful content] down is not that easy because it will pop up in different ways. People are always testing the lines. When I was in law school, we had professors who were debating what hate speech is, and it wasn’t always clear. You can’t pay somebody $15 an hour and have them be able to figure it out easily. The second problem is that most of these platforms were built by people who don’t suffer from the harassment that women and people of color, and especially women of color, experience. They don’t know what harassment feels like.
Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
FC: You titled the chapter about your time at Reddit “The Glass Cliff,” referring to the phenomenon where a woman is brought in to lead a company when it’s having trouble and winds up as the scapegoat. Do you think that you were set up to fail at Reddit?
EP: It definitely felt that way. There was a point when one of the board members said that he wanted me to get to half a billion users by the end of the year, and in my mind that just was so unrealistic. It made me wonder a little bit. But it wasn’t until I had more time and more perspective that it felt more so.
FC: While launching your nonprofit, Project Include, in 2016, you lamented in a post that most startups take limited and often potentially damaging actions to address diversity. They assume they have to “lower the bar” for hiring. How do you propose that new companies make significant positive impact instead?
EP: We [at Project Include] ended up coming up with 87 recommendations. For me, it’s [about] shaping companies by shaping the CEOs—and hopefully influencing VC firms, if that is possible, so that the right decisions get made, the right cultures get built and retained at scale, and everybody gets a chance to succeed.
30-second bio: Ellen Pao
Current: Cofounder of the nonprofit Project Include; chief diversity and inclusion officer and venture partner at Kapor Capital; author of Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
Education: Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University; law and business degrees from Harvard University
Previous jobs: Lawyer for Cravath, Swaine & Moore, followed by tenures at tech startups including BEA Systems and WebTV; chief of staff and junior partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins; interim CEO of Reddit
It’s been five years since women across Silicon Valley and beyond followed Ellen Pao’s landmark sex discrimination lawsuit against VC powerhouse Kleiner Perkins. Pao famously lost the case—and was even ordered to pay back her former employer’s legal fees.
She shares her experiences of decades of sexism, the emotional toll of a public trial, and her mission to make the Valley more equitable in her new memoir, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, out September 19.
In a recent interview with Fast Company, Pao described the process of suing Kleiner Perkins as “emotionally, financially, and professionally difficult.” Her book offers a similarly sobering assessment of what happens when a woman tries to take her employers to court for discrimination. Here’s a glimpse of what it’s like, according to Pao’s own experiences.
1. Your Personal and Professional Life Will Be Scrutinized
“I often heard people say that my case was a matter of ‘right issues, wrong plaintiff’ or that the reason why I lost was because I wasn’t a ‘perfect victim,'” writes Pao in the prologue of Reset. Once she brought her suit against Kleiner Perkins, Pao says, the firm did everything it could (often with the help of the media) to drag both her personal life and professional performance through the mud. She says:
In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms–“integrated networks of influence,” used in part for “reputation management”–and I believe they enlisted one to defame me online. Dozens, then thousands, of [social media] messages a day derided me as bad at my job, crazy, an embarrassment.
Pao recalls how, despite her seven years with the firm and her backing of companies with billion-dollar valuations, she was characterized as a “poor performer” by Kleiner Perkins in court and interviews with the press. She gives one particularly harrowing example of the ways her former employer tried to paint her as a bad employee:
A coworker testified that I’d fall asleep in board meetings. In my 14 years in Silicon Valley, in hundreds of lengthy meetings, some involving grueling hours spent on the most archaic of deal points, I’d fallen asleep in exactly one meeting . . . that meeting had taken place right before I had a traumatic miscarriage. The man on the stand knew I’d been hospitalized soon after that meeting and still chose to use it as evidence against me. My many years of working 70- and 80-hour weeks and pulling off multimillion-dollar deals just weren’t enough.
2. You’ll Need to Document Everything
Pao, a former lawyer, is accustomed to building a case and gathering evidence. To that end, she amassed 700,000 pages of documents, mostly from her work and personal email accounts, in preparation for her lawsuit. In her book, she highlights one such email, from 2009, in which her boss scolds her for having pointed out that her pay wasn’t in line with her male counterparts. In it, he writes:
I strongly recommend you stop complaining about your compensation. Just drop it. It clearly still bugs you, and that attitude of yours is a) no secret and b) damaging to your standing among [our firm’s leaders].
She also kept records of the retaliation she says she faced when she ended a romantic relationship with one of the firm’s partners, noting all the meetings and dinners she was not invited to, and the important emails and calls that she was excluded from. She kept copies of her performance reviews, and documented her boss’s reaction to her maternity leave, which was brought up as an example of her lack of commitment to her job. And she tracked the many sexist comments and jokes she heard and endured over the years.
Pao used all of this to compile a 12-page claim covering everything that happened to her during her seven years at Kleiner, including specific instances of gender discrimination in promotion and pay and retaliation after she reported harassment. This claim became the backbone for her case against Kleiner.
3. You May Have to Work Next to the People You’re Taking to Court
Sometimes women sue their companies for discrimination or harassment after they’ve left their jobs. Frequently, though, they still work at the companies they are suing, which makes it extremely awkward in the office. In Pao’s case, her lawyers advised her that her case would be stronger if she remained at Kleiner after filing her lawsuit. This is what Pao says about that time, during the late spring and early summer of 2012:
The general partners sometimes had long meetings to discuss the lawsuit; the 10 of them would file into one of the large, windowed conference rooms. I could see them hunched around the table looking annoyed as a team of lawyers blared over the speakerphone. If I walked down the hall, the room would fall silent and their eyes would follow me until I was out of sight.
Pao says that this time was so stressful and awkward that she stopping eating and sleeping, and spent most of her time in the office alone. Soon after she filed the lawsuit, she was given a negative performance review. She was ultimately fired a few months later.
4. It Could Take Years
Pao’s case lasted nearly three years. While she had voiced her concerns several times before, she formally lodged her complaints with her bosses in a January 2012 memo. When she didn’t see results from the memo, she filed her lawsuit in May 2012. After years of rebuffed offers to settle or mediate, depositions and jury selection, and relentless press coverage, the trial finally began in February 2015. It lasted five weeks. The verdict came down on March 27, 2015. During those years she became the Interim CEO of Reddit, and juggled her responsibilities in that high-profile role with the daily trial.
5. You Will Realize You Aren’t Alone
Thousands of women across the country followed Pao’s lawsuit closely. Many reached out to her before and during the trial–and many more got in touch after the verdict. She writes:
The day of the verdict, I received almost a hundred messages on LinkedIn alone. Friends from business school and law school wrote to offer support . . . Even white men in tech emailed me. One of the men who led engineering at BEA wrote, “Regardless of the verdict today, the fearlessness and integrity that you demonstrated though the trial provided a great model for others to follow. You broke a lot of glass.”
Pao received messages of support from some of the biggest names in business, government, and entertainment including: Lena Dunham, Jessica Chastain, Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg, Anita Hill, and Shonda Rhimes.
But perhaps the most powerful notes were the ones she received from women who had experienced similar situations and people who said that Pao had opened their eyes to the issue of sexism in the world of venture capital and tech. A female lawyer sent this message to Pao (via Pao’s lawyer), just after the verdict:
Je suis Ellen Pao. No matter how “abrasive.” She’s a venture capitalist, for pity’s sake, isn’t she supposed to be abrasive? What we want is a seat. On the plane to Vail. At the dinner with the client. At the table around which decisions are being made . . . And if a women tries to get a seat, she is deflected by subtle criticism that she is lacking confidence, and then she is too abrasive . . . Just tell her we support her.
6. For Better or Worse, The Suit Will Define Your Career
The case against Kleiner Perkins made Pao a household name. Her trial also brought the issues of sexism in Silicon Valley into the spotlight in such a dramatic way that the aftermath has become known as “the Pao Effect.” Even in less high-profile cases, the fact that a woman has sued her former employer (regardless of the outcome) will likely follow her for the rest of her career. In her book, Pao highlights how hard it can be for women who sue:
Before suing, I’d consulted other women who had sued big, powerful companies over harassment and discrimination, and they all gave me pretty much the same advice: “Don’t do it.” One woman told me, “It’s a complete mismatch of resources. They don’t fight fair. Even if you win, it will destroy your reputation.”
Pao spoke with an investment adviser who recalled becoming such an “outcast and target” at her firm once she filed suit that she would throw up each morning before work. Nevertheless, she told Pao she doesn’t regret her decision. And despite the personal and financial consequences of her own trial, Pao says she doesn’t regret her decision either. But it has defined her career.
Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
Remaking Silicon Valley into a more inclusive place is now her life’s mission. While she was in the midst of her lawsuit against Kleiner, Pao took the helm of Reddit and led the charge in removing revenge porn and shutting down online harassment on the site. (Those moves weren’t popular with everyone, and she was asked to resign in 2015.) Also during her tenure, she attempted to overhaul the company’s culture by making more diverse hires and instituting a sexual harassment policy.
Today, Pao is an investment partner at the VC firm Kapor Capital and serves as the chief diversity and inclusion officer at the Kapor Center for Social Impact. She’s also a cofounder of the nonprofit Project Include, which aims to move the needle in Silicon Valley by teaching companies the value of diversity. Pao writes:
We channeled our frustration with the tepid “diversity solutions” prevalent in the industry, ones focused on PR-oriented initiatives that spend more time outlining the problems than implementing solutions. To become truly inclusive, companies needed solutions that included all people, covered everything a company does, and used detailed metrics to hold leaders accountable. So we decided to give CEOs and startups just that.
In her book, Pao says that she could have received “millions” from Kleiner had she signed a non-disparagement agreement. She didn’t, and is now able to share her story—and all its lessons—freely.
A friend of mine was recently telling me about her new job. “I like it, except my boss is hard to read,” she said. “I wish she’d just come out and say what she thinks!” Instead, her boss uses wishy-washy expressions like, “Hopefully you’re okay with this?” and, “I might possibly have a suggestion for you.”
As organizations become flatter, communicating well in every direction is getting more important. But managers and leaders are often worried about sounding too controlling, so they soften what they say. Their team members, taking their cue, bury their own ideas under hedging expressions that muddle their meaning. Before long, everyone just winds up sounding less clear, confident, and authoritative than they actually feel. In order to make sure you sound like you know what you’re talking about, cut these common words and phrases from your vocabulary.
For starters, it’s okay not to be sure about something. After all, false confidence is often just as bad as open ignorance. But saying “I’m not sure” when you really do have a decent grasp on the matter only undercuts your cause.
When your employee, for instance, says, “I’m not quite sure, but I should have the report done by Friday,” you’re left to wonder whether that means you’ll actually have to wait until the following week, or that they’re just being modest. There are better ways to communicate tentativeness in cases like this: “I’m waiting on a few more data points from our finance team, so as long as those come through tomorrow, the report will be ready by Friday.” Now your employee sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.
Similar qualifiers to avoid include “only a thought,” “just my opinion,” “hard to say,” and “this might be a silly question.” None of these humble idioms help you make a compelling case about a complicated topic, or let you underscore what you do know in a situation where there are unknowns. The goal isn’t to minimize uncertainty or downplay risks. It’s to be taken seriously as someone who can navigate those gray-area experiences with well-founded confidence.
When someone says, “I sort of think” or “I kind of suspect,” it’s clear they either don’t want to come out and speak the truth or else don’t really know their own mind.
Maybe a sales manager says something like this: “I kind of think we should approach that client again–it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from them. What do you think?” Is she uncertain about going forward and genuinely wants your opinion, or is she just trying to give direction by softening her statement?
Or perhaps your boss says, “I sort of liked the work you turned in last week.” Perhaps she’s suggesting your work wasn’t up to snuff, or perhaps she’s just giving you a compliment and softening her language. It might seem like an unimportant difference, but in reality it leaves you not knowing how to respond: Do you keep doing what you’ve been doing, or do you ask for feedback on how to do better work next time?
Not only do these phrases create a lack of clarity for team members, they also make team leaders who use them sound less confident and transparent than they should.
3. “Maybe,” “Possibly,” And “Potentially”
“Maybe,” “possibly,” “probably,” “basically,” “largely,” and “hopefully” are all words that smack of indecision. If a manager says to a staff member, “Hopefully you’ll be okay with this change,” his listener might wonder whether she actually has leeway to challenge it.
Many qualifiers like these have a similar effect. An employee tells a supervisor, “The project is largely complete”–instead of actually saying when it will be done or why it’s not quite there yet. An IT manager says to an internal client, “It’s basically a software problem, but possibly we can fix it pretty soon ourselves.” Is this good news or bad news? Who knows! None of these phrases instill much confidence that the speaker has a handle on the situation.
4. Using The Past Tense When You Mean The Present
How many times have you been in a meeting and heard a colleague say, “I thought I should mention that . . . ” or, “I was thinking we should . . . “? It sounds like the person talking no longer quite believes in whatever idea they’re putting forward. Compare those past tense expressions to phrases like “I want to mention . . .” and “I think we should . . .” and the difference is clear.
Similarly, when you say, “I just wanted to point out that our project is well under way,” the first part of the statement hedges the rest of the sentence that comes after it, which is actually positive. It’s as though you really did have something to say, then thought better of it, but finally decided–hesitantly–to put it out there anyway. You’ve just created confusion, rather than announcing clearly and confidently that your project is going just fine.
If you want to sound like a capable speaker who knows what you’re talking about, don’t water down your message. Avoid these four patterns and expressions. They don’t make you sound more approachable–they just make you sound uncertain, even when you aren’t.
Mobility experts agree that more people will share vehicles in the future. But there’s a battle over who will provide these communal cars and how they’ll be shared.
One the one side are those who believe people will rent from a fleet of cars operated and maintained by one company. This vision is more a remodeling of the traditional car-rental paradigm, rejiggered to accommodate trips that happen over hours rather than days. Then there’s another faction, which imagines people will share their personal cars with strangers. To this group, the new side hustle is renting your car during the hours of the day or week when it normally sits idle. Finally, there is a tertiary group in this car-sharing battle: ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft, which think the future of mobility resides in trip sharing.
But it’s the second group–the car-sharing faction–that’s gaining some attention among car manufacturers eager to make bets on the future of mobility before it’s actually taken shape. Today, the German automaker Daimler said it is co-leading a $92 million round of funding in Turo, a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform.
“We at Daimler believe the future of mobility will be shared, will be autonomous, electric, and connected,” says Jörg Lamparter, head of all Daimler Mobility Services. “We know this will happen and we have to prepare for that.”
Daimler already has a range of innovative services it’s investing in, including a fleet-style car-sharing club called Car2Go and a taxi hailing app called Mytaxi. It also launched its own peer-to-peer car rental service called Croove, which operates in Germany. Daimler is now selling Croove to Turo as a part of its recent deal. When I asked Lamparter why the company decided to offload Croove to a competitor, he said that Daimler didn’t want to compete with Turo; it would rather invest.
“It’s always a decision you have to make as a company when you launch something and you follow an idea,” he said. “What does it take to scale it?”
Money Follows Momentum
Car manufacturers are keen to put cash into transit startups that seem to be gaining speed. Turo says it has 4 million users and 160,000 cars on its platform. Already the company operates in the United States, Canada, and the U.K. The acquisition of Croove will give it a foothold in Germany. Another one of Turo’s investors, South Korean conglomerate SK Holdings, is poised to help the company expand into Asia.
Daimler isn’t the only car company dabbling in car-sharing projects. Last year, Toyota put money into Getaround, another platform where people can let their car like an apartment on Airbnb. Toyota is also working on embedding Getaround’s technology into its cars so they can be unlocked without a key by Getaround renters. While Daimler and Toyota see a future in world where people lend their cars to one another, General Motors thinks its managed fleets of cars, called Maven, is the better bet.
The logistics of renting a personal car may prove to be too much for most people. There are the small nuisances: Car renters can be late returning a car, for instance. But there’s also the possibility a renter could get into an accident. Turo says less than 1% of the cars on its platform suffer damage, and when crashes do happen, Turo touts a $1 million insurance coverage with no deductible. (In fact, among its three insurance options, one has a deductible).
And then there’s this: Turo pays up to the vehicle’s actual cash value—a figure determined by its insurance agency. That amount can be a point of contention for car owners expecting Turo to take on the full costs for their mangled car. In February, the owner of a totaled Audi R8 found that Turo’s insurer appraised the car at $12,000-$16,000 less than what he believed the car to be worth. Such a discrepancy may be standard fare when dealing with an insurance company, but consumers might not know that’s what they’re signing up for when they put their car on Turo.
The company is trying to fix some of these issues by working more closely with Liberty Mutual, both its sole insurer and an investor.
“We’re hoping to work with them to really get a fast-track understanding and deepening of our expertise in underwriting and risk management and insurance so we can provide better coverage and more economical coverage for our hosts and our guests over time,” says Turo CEO Andre Haddad. Long term, he’d like to develop car-sharing specific products, which could help give the industry more consumer protections and legitimacy.
There are other challenges for this car-sharing model. Turo could face opposition in new markets where consumer protections are king. In 2014, New York ejected Turo from the state for falsely advertising that owners would not be liable in the event that a person renting their car got into an accident. The state said owners can indeed be on the hook for an accident, even if they are not the driver, and their personal insurance can be impacted. It also penalized Turo for “unlicensed insurance activity.”
But that probably won’t stop consumers, anxious to make another buck, from joining the car-share economy.
Karlie Kloss and Christie Turlington Burns are both supermodels, so it makes sense that a brand like Cole Haan would want to feature them in a new campaign. But “Extraordinary Women, Extraordinary Stories” goes beyond merely presenting them as looking great while wearing the products. The video ads give both women a forum to talk about what they do to make the world a better place.
On one hand, the campaign gives us stylish profiles of Kloss and Burns, which we expect from a fashion brand. However, the stories delve deeper into the causes they support and why. Burns talks about her work with Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit organization that raises awareness and funds to help make pregnancy and childbirth safer for women around the world. Kloss, meanwhile, talks about the motivation behind Kode with Klossy, a two-week summer camp program that teaches girls to code, with the aim of encouraging more female leaders in tech.
Cole Haan’s chief marketing officer and general manager of business development David Maddocks says the idea for the multimedia campaign was initially inspired by the company’s approach to product innovation. Created in-house, the goal was to find a campaign idea that reflected the notion of being smarter about the things the company does and the style it creates, which Maddocks says is systemic to its culture.
“We were really discussing how the world of fashion has its unwritten rules on communication–a lot of gloss, a lot of flare, short on copy, big on logo. If you flip through the pages of any fashion magazine and you cover up all the logos, you get the language of the industry,” says Maddocks. “The point isn’t about looking like Karlie Kloss or Christie Turlington Burns, it’s about, if you choose, you can live a life with purpose and have that in common with them. And that just seems like a more substantive way to have a dialogue with our customers.”
Beyond Kloss and Burns, the brand is getting the word out in a few different ways. It teamed with Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter for custom content around the new campaign, and there’s also a partnership with Gimlet for a roundtable discussion around “Extraordinary Stories” among a handful of its podcast hosts, including Lisa Chow (Startup), Flora Lictman (ELT), Brittany Luse (The Nod), and Wendy Zukerman (Science Vs.).
“These two women have credibility in fashion,” says Maddocks of Kloss and Burns. “But one of the things we wanted to do is enter fashion’s party and be the smartest conversation in the room.”
“This looks terrible,” I heard my manager exclaim from a few desks away, clearly upset with the graphic designer on the other end of the phone–a freelancer who probably wouldn’t be too keen to work with us again.
The more companies tap the freelance economy to handle major tasks and projects, the more managers have to collaborate with people other than their direct reports. It can be tricky to know the right thing to say when you’re managing a project that’s being done by people other than full-time employees who you see every day.
During my career I’ve helped hire and onboard hundreds of freelancers and outside contractors, and I’ve worked personally with many of them. While I’m still learning, my experience has given me a crash-course in third-party project management. Here are a few tips for making it work.
Be Nice–And Don’t Dictate
“This logo design is bad, please try again.”
“Thank you for your hard work on this. I love the colors you used, but I’m wondering if we could work a bit more on the positioning of the font on this logo.”
In my experience, feedback option #2 will outperform #1 any day of the week. While being nice should be common sense, I’ve heard countless contractors receive soul-crushing feedback about their work; in fact, I’ve gotten it myself. Just because you don’t have a longstanding relationship with a contractor you’ve hired to tackle a certain project doesn’t give you license to boss them around. Not only is it unprofessional, it’s counterproductive.
Cary Collier and Doug Chambers, the cofounders of a spa and wellness consultancy called BluSpa, collaborate with freelancers daily. They take the trouble to define a clear work scope and offer examples of deliverables, so as to keep expectations on the same page.
“We do not tell contractors exactly how to do their work–they do not want to hear this,” Collier and Chambers explained to me by email. “We quarterback or orchestrate the process, review work along the way, and strive for joy in the collaboration versus pain.” In other words, they approach their freelancers like a creative braintrust, not a stable of workhorses.
“We ask our team’s opinions instead of telling them how to do something. This method is simple and productive and helps our creative consultants feel a part of our team and the decision-making,” they explain. Just dictating instructions is no way to lay the groundwork for long-term collaboration.
Pay On Time
When my business was first getting started, I was living from client check to client check. I always appreciated those who paid for their completed project in a timely manner. So now, when I work with contractors, I try to pay their invoices as soon as possible.
From the freelancer’s perspective, a late check is more than just a sign of slow cash-flow. It can make you question your own ability. “Maybe they hated the work” or “maybe they’re mad that I’m billing them” are among the crazy thoughts that have gone through my own mind while I’ve waited on a pending invoice. Paying your invoices on time will keep your contractors happy and more likely to want to work with you again. More than that, it shows you value the partnership, which leads to a more transparent, productive working relationship. In other words, as simple as it sounds, paying on time is a crucial management strategy.
Yes, sometimes your accounts-payable department is backed up and you need to pay late. But if that’s the case, every good manager of freelancers and contractors needs to communicate the issue and give as solid a time estimate of the delay as possible. Whatever you do, don’t avoid that uncomfortable conversation.
“Apart from the financial aspect, prompt payment shows respect for your time and the work that you did.” Suvdeep Bagui, the founder of marketing agency Storepush, adds. “Paying on time and communicating builds trust, which is essential for a stable and pleasant work arrangement.”
Invest In Your Freelancers
Freelancers can seem like an inexpensive alternative to hiring a full-time employee. You might think that the whole point of doing so is that you get high-skilled expertise for the one project where you really need it. But that still doesn’t let you off the hook as a manager from bringing your contractor up to speed properly. At a bare minimum, some measure of training is critical to making sure any collaborator understands your company and its goals. Too many in-house managers don’t make even that basic time investment–and then end up paying the price themselves.
“In my experience, the lower the rate someone charges, the more time I have to spend on instruction, editing, and feedback,” says Andy Boyer, founder of a multimedia content agency Scribes and Storycasters. “If I’m working under a tight deadline, the extra few dollars I spend is well worth the value of my time,” he explains.
“When you hire a new freelancer, remember they are bringing with them a style bias toward all their previous work, not yours. Share your branding guidelines and messaging frameworks with them early,” Boyer says, “or you’ll be editing their work for tone later.”
When Someone Isn’t The Right Fit, Don’t Pretend It’s All Their Fault
When I was looking for graphic designers to help me create my retail products, I evaluated more than 300 contractors. While some had amazing styles, their design aesthetics weren’t always what I was looking for. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to find the right team. So whenever I’m about to hire for a big project, I often like to contract for a small project first, just to make sure the freelancer and I have the same vision and working style. This is a good management strategy whenever you’re considering giving anyone on your team an unfamiliar assignment–just start small.
It also forces you to plan properly as the person who’ll be managing that work. When I’m getting ready to hire for a new design project, I try to plan exactly what I’m looking for before sharing my vision with a third party. In my case, that means finding examples of styles I like, choosing color schemes, and even mocking up samples on my own. Yes, that can create some up-front effort, but it leads to a more productive collaboration later down the line.
“Before you hire a freelancer, be crystal clear on your needs,” advises Jon Youshaei of the comics site Every Vowel. “I always ask myself: Do I have a vision of what I want? If I don’t, I can’t effectively communicate it when giving feedback to a freelancer, and it’ll just end up wasting time and money.”
Working with freelancers can be wildly rewarding and can give managers a fresh perspective from outside the company. But if you don’t preserve these relationships, it can be a pretty disjointed, mercenary experience for everyone involved. “Too many freelancers do work and have no idea what happens to it,” Youshaei points out. “I let them know how much I appreciate their work and how none of this would be possible without them.”
This way, when one contractor turns out not to be a good fit for a certain project, the working relationship is intact for a future one.
Amazon is coming to Staten Island and it’s bringing jobs for humans and robots. The Seattle e-commerce giant said today it will open an 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center in the New York City borough, its first in the state of New York, which it claims will create 2,250 full-time jobs along with “opportunities for employees to engage with advanced robotics.” More specifically, Amazon says “employees at the Staten Island fulfillment center will work alongside robotics to pick, pack, and ship customer items such as household essentials, books, and toys.”
It’s not the first time Amazon has used this language to tout the opening of a new warehouse. It played up the “robotics” angle for recent announcements of fulfillment centers in Michigan, Florida, and Colorado, to name a few. And, of course, full automation–or something close to it–is the end game for Amazon. A report in the Seattle Times last December revealed that 20 of Amazon’s fulfillment centers employed 45,000 robots, a 50% increase over the previous holiday season.
In these trying times of upheavals in national policy, a president who rules via Twitter, North Korean missile tests, Russian probes, natural disasters, and the continued presence of trans fats in doughnuts, sometimes it feels like you just need a hug. Luckily, Care Bears are back. The furry little friends that lined shelves in the ’80s are marking their 35th anniversary with a set of limited-edition bears ready to dole out judgement-free hugs.
The bears go on sale today for just $5 a pop at Hollar.com, which is a helluva lot less than a therapy bill and guaranteed trans-fat free. Cuddle up with one while wearing your Lisa Frank pajamas, watching the Netflix reboot of Carmen Sandiego, and not reading Twitter.
Gimlet just might be buying a round of their eponymous cocktails, because they have something to celebrate. WPP, the British advertising and PR company, just plunked down $5 million to acquire a minority stake in the podcasting company behind hit shows like Reply All and Start Up.
“WPP’s investment is a strong signal of validation from the world’s largest advertising company that podcasts are a great medium for advertising and brand building,” says Matt Lieber, cofounder and president of Gimlet Media. “Its investment in Gimlet specifically, feels like a stamp approval of our approach to quality storytelling.”
The deal makes sense, because through its Gimlet Creative arm, the company has been making ads and branded content for companies like Ford, PepsiCo, and Microsoft, lending those oh-so-serious companies some of its hipster appeal. It’s also made fun podcasts like DTR, created for Tinder/Match, Virgin Atlantic’s The Venture, and Open for Business from eBay that casual listeners may not even realize are sponcon, which is worth its weight in gold for advertisers.
Now PatriotHole is doing what all the other cool media companies are doing: pivoting to video. Today it launched a new digital show that looks a heckofalot like InfoWars. Hosted by Alex Baxter, a man of similar whiteness and meatiness to Alex Jones, the PatriotHole show seems to consist of bizarre rants about America and freedom. The show is launching today and will be available to view over PatriotHole‘s Facebook.
Though obvious parody, the show is surely strategic on ClickHole‘s part. Facebook is doubling down on its video programming efforts as media companies flail to figure out how best to keep digital ad dollars flowing. Perhaps beyond endless food content, right-wing parody will be the key to Facebook video success.
My path to going freelance didn’t happen in a fit of cubicle rage. It was quite the opposite: I was in the middle of a dream trip to Italy when I realized working for myself was what would really make me happy. The scrimping I did to afford the trip also made me realize I had what it took to build a savings cushion to help me get off the ground.
When I was asked to write about how I was saving to go full-time freelance, I did so in true Leslie Knope fashion. (Friends often refer to me as the Parks and Recreation character, and only partly because I host Galentine’s Day every year.) Thanks to my Type A personality, I made exhaustive outlines, asked for second opinions, and agonized over every word before finally submitting my draft.
The story went live on my first day as a full-time freelancer. As I read over my own experiences, I frowned and chewed my thumbnail. Now what?
Anxiety can be a catch-22. Many of the anxious behaviors that defined my professional life–perfectionism, hyperorganization, multitasking–are praised in today’s workplace. But would they hold me back as a solopreneur?
As it turns out, they wouldn’t. In fact, going freelance helped me work through my anxiety by keeping me focused on each step of building my business–which ultimately enabled me to strike out on my own successfully.
Building My Client List
First things first, I needed clients. There were just two obstacles in my way: my people-pleasing tendencies and a fear of rejection.
In the past, I’d gone above and beyond to make others happy, like making regular trips from Virginia to New York to interview in-person for unpaid internships. But bending over backward tells others your needs aren’t as important as theirs. I soon realized if I wanted to survive freelancing, I had to make sure I valued my time and quality of life, too. So I’ve learned to decline requests for free trials of my services; I also avoid the impulse to drop everything to answer an email.
Given the hours I laid out for myself and my monthly financial needs, I calculated that I could live comfortably with up to six clients on my roster at a time. I jumped in by pitching as many clients as I had open spots each day. I wasn’t picky about where I pitched either. I’ve earned clients everywhere from my network of publishing contacts, writers and former clients; to cold pitches on Upwork, Reedsy, and the Editorial Freelancers Association job board.
Getting a lot of no’s out of the way early on paid off. My response to rejection is a powerful choice: I can be upset, or I can learn from it and move on. Now, I’m constantly booked two months in advance, and my fear of failure has lost its teeth.
Exhaustion, double-booking, under-eye concealer–yet more reasons why I so deeply identify with Leslie Knope. (Hosting a telethon while sleep-deprived sounds exactly like something I’d do.)
But marathon multitasking is not sustainable. That hit me full force back in May, when I found myself strung out on caffeine balancing client work, email, blog posts, accounting, and developing a webinar curriculum– usually until 5 a.m. (I’m tired just thinking about it.)
In order to run a sustainable business, I had to let go–the kryptonite of control freaks everywhere.
Delegating was doubly challenging, because it meant transitioning from a savings-focused lifestyle to one that occasionally meant I had to pay to save time. I now balance frugality with responsible outsourcing of tasks I can’t bill to my clients, like balancing my books or blogging about my business. Luckily, such expenses tend to be tax-deductible, which is a nice incentive for being kind to myself.
I’ve also learned to set work-life boundaries. I set deadlines throughout the day to block out my schedule, rounding up to the nearest half-hour just in case. I set off every morning by 9 a.m., and around 5 p.m., I reach a stopping point and take a stress-relieving jog. Then I enjoy dinner with my boyfriend, Paul, before going back to work or relaxing, depending on the night.
Time management is a work in progress for me, but I’m happy to say I’m getting there.
Managing The Books
If you’re self-employed, quarterly estimated taxes are no joke. Not paying them can mean facing penalties that accrue daily interest on your annual tax return.
I’m prone to ruminating on important subjects like this, so I outsource my anxiety to my trusted accountant, Chad. Chad has helped me in many ways, like helping me apply for my local business license and allocating money for my quarterly estimated taxes (i.e., 25% of every incoming payment.)
Speaking of taxes, if a client pays me more than $600 per year, I give them a Form 1099 for their next annual return. I do this at the outset of our collaboration so that there’s no confusion or unfortunate oversight come tax time.
Budgeting For My Personal Life (Again)
Budgeting is different for freelancers than it is for traditional employees. Payroll doesn’t deposit checks into our account every other Friday, so we can’t plan for incidental expenses or savings until we actually have the money in the bank.
Because of this, I’m not just better at hearing “no,” I’m better at saying it, too. Until I make enough to cover my fixed expenses each month, I counter my friends’ invitations out with invites in. Fun traditions have sprung up as a result, like October’s “Monster Madness,” in which we watch scary movies and then debate which villains should move on to the next round of our brackets.
It’s also hard to anticipate savings ahead of time, which is the toughest part of freelance life for me. However, by keeping incidentals within reason and maintaining a full client list, I’ve been able to save up to $1,000 per month, which I spread across a few goals: a down payment on a home, a travel slush fund, and a retirement account.
Reaching My 1-Year Freelancing Anniversary
Freelancing isn’t for everyone. I knew this, which was why last year I sat at my desk, feeling that anxiety would keep me from succeeding.
But so far, it hasn’t. By embracing challenges and shifting my perspective, I’ve worked with clients on four continents, I’m comfortable in my own skin, and I’m even launching a goal-setting planner for writers this fall. If not for the sink-or-swim nature of my industry, none of this could have happened.
This October, just before my freelance anniversary, I’ll return to Italy for a writing workshop. I got my invitation as I was drafting this article–and I had to sit back for a moment, dazzled by karma.
The fact that I’d trusted myself to build a business meant I had the time–and money!–to accept the invitation. I once would have seen this opportunity as risky and last-minute, but now? Now, it feels like an adventure.
This article originally appeared on LearnVest and is reprinted with permission.
When Fernando Espino Casas graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2015, one thing was critical to his getting a job: Three years earlier, the Obama administration had created DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
Casas, whose parents brought him to Milwaukee as a child, is an undocumented immigrant; DACA gives people who grew up in the U.S. but don’t have legal status a temporary permit that allows them to study or work in the country, and protection from deportation. Now that the Trump administration has announced it will rescind the program–and that DACA recipients, or “Dreamers,” will begin to lose their status in six months–Casas doesn’t know what will happen to his newly launched career as a business analyst.
His reaction to the announcement was “sadness,” he says. “The decision isn’t a legal one. It’s a political one, born out of a misguided and misinformed belief held by very few that we Dreamers are somehow a detriment to this society, though we have spent our lives proving otherwise.”
“Given that there is not that much momentum, and all of this is happening at once, I feel that it might not happen quickly enough.” [Photo: courtesy Saba Nafees]The Trump administration argues that six months is enough time for Congress to pass immigration legislation that could resolve the status of DACA recipients. But attempts to pass similar laws in the past, such as the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, have failed. (DACA itself was a response to that failure.)
“I want to have hope that all the support vocalized throughout social media by congressmen and women from both parties should translate into a unified effort to pass something, even a bare-bones DREAM Act, but the reality is that I’m skeptical,” says Casas. “I never have wanted to be more wrong about my feelings than this, but all that we have seen from this Congress throughout 2017 doesn’t give me any confidence that this will get done.”
Saba Nafees, a DACA recipient and doctoral student in mathematical biology at Texas Tech University, says that she has been more optimistic about legislative action in the past. “Right now, I don’t see as much momentum as I saw from [the DREAM Act or a push for more comprehensive immigration reform],” she says. “Given that there is not that much momentum, and all of this is happening at once, I feel that it might not happen quickly enough.”
If Congress doesn’t act, nearly 300,000 people will lose the protections from DACA in 2018, and more than 300,000 additional people will lose those protections in 2019. Another 200,000 people have a status that will expire before March 2018, and will be allowed to apply to renew their status DACA one time if they act within the next month.
As DACA protections end, that could put recipients at risk for deportation (though the administration says that it doesn’t plan to prioritize this), and would mean that many companies, nonprofits, and schools will lose employees. While the Trump White House says that it wants to stop companies from hiring undocumented immigrants who “deprive American workers of jobs and higher wages,” Kamau Chege, a DACA recipient currently attending Whitworth University in Washington, compares the policy to Jim Crow laws that restricted where black Americans could work. When those laws changed, Chege says, wages improved for poor white people as well.
“The American people overwhelmingly support DACA, and overwhelmingly support a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants.” [Photo: courtesy Judy Mata]“When the attorney general is practicing 21st-century segregation with this immigration policy, it’s not going to leave anyone better off,” says Chege. “It’s going to make everyone worse off, because now there will be hundreds of thousands of people who won’t have jobs to continue to pay rent and pay property taxes to buy as much gas or as many groceries, and pay those taxes.” Students will lose teachers; Teach for America, for example, has 190 corps members and alumni teachers that are DACA recipients, teaching about 10,000 students in 11 states.
He also plans to keep fighting for change–for all immigrants, not only those who arrived as children. “We’re not going to allow Republicans in Congress to use the DREAM Act as the vehicle for white supremacists’ demand of a wall or bloated enforcement that would put our parents, our cousins, our friends in danger,” he says. “I’m optimistic about what the immigrant rights movement will be capable of in terms of making sure that nothing passes this Congress that would harm others under the false pretenses of protecting us.”
Chege leads a progressive movement called AllofUs that helps organize young activists. “The American people overwhelmingly support DACA, and overwhelmingly support a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants,” he says. “It’s because they know that we’re their neighbors, their customers, their small business owners . . . and most importantly, their fellow Americans. It is just fundamentally un-American for anyone, especially a government filled by billionaires and white nationalists, to determine who is deserving and who is not, and who is American and who is not. I think you’re going to see an immigrant youth movement that is going to define that for ourselves and say that every undocumented immigrant who calls this country their home has a right to stay and continue to contribute to the communities they’re already a part of.”
JetBlue is preparing for a looming pilot shortage by expanding its first-of-its-kind training program that takes regular schmos (like you!) and turns them into high-flying commercial airplane pilots. Boeing estimates there will be about 117,000 pilot jobs that need filling in North America in the next 20 years, and few people with the required 1,500 hours of flight time to fill them. That’s why JetBlue last year launched Gateway Select, to train the youth of America in the aviation arts, no experience necessary.
Trainees are taught everything from meteorology to aerodynamics and rack up the requisite 1,500 hours of flying experience before they are hired at JetBlue. According to Bloomberg, the first batch of trainees included a grocery store clerk, an accountant, and a baggage handler–and the program set them on the path to flying the friendly skies. Want to get in on the fun? JetBlue will be accepting online applications starting Wednesday and running through Sept. 30. It isn’t cheap, though: According to the website, the cost is approximately $125,000, payable in installments over about 15 months.
