For the past five years, Fast Company published an annual list of 50 LGBTQ+ people who were shaping the worlds of business, tech, politics, and culture. As the list evolvesand given the continued attacks on queer and trans peopleweve decided to change the format this year, looking more deeply into the contributions of eight notably impactful individuals.
The leaders we chose to profile for 2025 are at the forefront of their fields. Chase Strangio is the first openly transgender person to argue in front of the Supreme Court. He spoke with nonbinary Olympian Nikki Hiltz about their work, and what its like to be so visible during this moment. Youll also read about Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia and current partner at ReGen Ventures, who calls on other business leaders to double down on their values during a time when many executives are growing quiet, and Audrey Tang, who is working to spread pro-democracy ideas to combat negative sentiments on social media.
Olympic runner Nikki Hiltz and ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio on trans equality in the Trump era
As anti-trans legislation and rhetoric continue to escalate across the U.S.from sweeping state-level bans on gender-affirming care to renewed efforts to bar trans people from public lifetrans nonbinary elite runner Nikki Hiltz and ACLUs LGBTQ+ rights lawyer Chase Strangio find themselves at the intersection of justice and representation. Read more.
Rose Marcario is doubling down on her values
When she was CEO of Patagonia, Rose Marcario stood out as one of the most outspoken voices in business against President Donald Trump during his first term. Under her leadership, Patagonia even sued the Trump administration after he issued a proclamation to shrink public land in two national monuments.
Now, in the midst of Trumps second term, Marcario is no longer at the helm of the progressive outdoor apparel company, but she’s still taking a stand. Read more.
Audrey Tang wants to save democracy with pro-social media
A senior fellow at the safer tech nonprofit Project Liberty Institute, Tang builds tools that she can leave behind to empower the next generation with a wider canvas. Concerned about social media algorithms that favor rageful engagement over unity, and having done ample work to maintain democracy in Taiwan, shes spreading her pro-democracy ideas globallyeven as a self-professed anarchist. Read more.
How Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel is shaping the legal resistance to Trump
Nessel has emerged as a formidable figure in the legal resistance to the Trump administration. In no way, shape, or form does this resemble a normal presidency, Nessel says of Trumps return to the White House. Read more.
These leaders are working to ensure LGBTQ+ historyand futuresremain visible
Fast Company asked leaders at three New York City-based LGBTQ+ community spacesthe Lesbian Herstory Archives, the American LGBTQ+ Museum, and the NYC LGBT Community Centerto learn more about how these groups are responding to a challenging political moment through legal action, grassroots fundraising, and making the histories of queer people more visible. Read more.
Writers: Chris Azzopardi, Rebecca Barker, Jessica Klein, Pavithra Mohan, and Kristin ToussaintEditors: Kathleen Davis and Julia HerbstDesign: Alice Alves, Heda Hokschirr, Anne Latini, Cayleigh ParrishPhoto: Sandra Riao and Maja Saphir
In 2014, five years before Dana Nessel became the attorney general of Michiganback when she was still running her own law firmshe took on a pivotal case challenging the states ban on same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. The case put her in direct opposition to her predecessor and attorney general at the time, Bill Schuette, who she says fought tooth and nail to uphold the state law.
During the trial, Schuette hired experts who used spurious anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric to defend the law. [They] said that gay people were going to hell, Nessel recalls. On the standunder oath, getting paid by our tax dollarsthey made arguments that same-sex couples couldn’t appreciate the sanctity of marriage. Another argument was that the children of same-sex couples would be more likely to go to prison, or become addicted to drugs or alcohol, or become criminals. I had to sit there with my future wife, who was at the table with me and also worked on the case, and listen to these arguments being made.
Nessel ultimately won the case, which was then consolidated with other lawsuits and appealed to the Supreme Court as part of the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges, paving the way for the national legalization of same-sex marriage. In 2019, when she assumed the role of attorney general, Nessel became the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to statewide office in Michiganas well as the first Democrat to hold the position in over 15 years.
An office that represents each and every person
Coming into the role, she felt strongly about sharply deviating from Schuettes record. I wanted my department to operate in a very different way than the office had operated under him and his predecessor, which was very discriminatory against the LGBTQ community, she says. Case after case after case, they took the side of discrimination. I wanted it to be an office that represented each and every person in my state and thought that the Department of Attorney General should be used to advance people’s rights and not to impugn them. So thats what I tried to do.
In the six years since she took office, Nessel has made a name for herself in Michigan as a progressive darling and a fierce critic of President Trump, dating back to his first term in office. In 2022, Nessel successfully argued a case before the Michigan Supreme Court that people should be protected against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity under the states civil rights law.
Over the years, Nessel has worked with legislators to advance multiple bills intended to mitigate gun violence, which have now been enacted into law. She supported the charges brought after the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School in southeast Michigan, which set a legal precedent for demanding accountability from the parents of a school shooter. Nessel also continued to push for further scrutiny of the schools responsibility and is currently overseeing an investigation alongside local prosecutors. In December, she joined a coalition of attorneys general as part of a concerted effort to hold the firearms industry accountable for its role in perpetuating gun violence.
After Roe v. Wade fell, Nessel refused to enforce an abortion ban dating back to 1931 that was still technically in effect in Michigan. The law has since been struck down, and Michigan voters also passed a constitutional amendment to enshrine access to abortion care; the state has also repealed a number of TRAP laws that imposed stringent restrictions on people seeking abortions. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we did make some progress, even in areas where it seems like we’ve lost significant rights, Nessel says of the states progress on abortion access. It’s sort of paradoxical, but in some ways, in Michigan, [after] that decision, we actually have more rights when it comes to access to reproductive care.
Nessel has presided over a number of high-profile cases, including an investigation into how Michigan State University handled allegations of sexual abuse brought against Larry Nassar and lawsuits brought against opioid distributors and the leading manufacturers of PFAS, otherwise known as forever chemicals. Early into her tenure, she established a hate crimes unit in response to an uptick in incidents across the state of Michigan.
She has also faced her share of criticism, particularly in recent months, following her decision to pursue multiple cases involving pro-Palestinian activistsand at a time when the Trump administration has explicitly cracked down on student protesters who support Palestine. The attorney generals office had brought a case against student protesters who were arrested at the University of Michigan last year, though the charges were recently dropped by Nessel. The office is, however, still pursuing charges against activists who allegedly vandalized the homes of university officials and a handful of businesses.
It’s about me investigating and prosecuting people who are alleged to have committed crimes, period, Nessel says of the vandalism cases. And I would do this if these individuals supported LGBTQ rights; I would do it the exact same way if they supported reproductive rights. I would do it irrespective of whatever cause they support. It’s not their rationale for having committed these crimesit’s their actions. That’s my job. I’m the top law enforcement officer in the state, and I take that job very seriously.
This administration has absolutely no regard for the law
Perhaps most notably, Nessel has emerged as a formidable figure in the legal resistance to the Trump administration. In no way, shape, or form does this resemble a normal presidency, Nessel says of Trumps return to the White House. This administration just has absolutely no regard for the law or the Constitution or any of our American governmental norms, and they’ve continued to break down all of our societal norms that I would submit are the things that make America great. So it concerns me when I see elected leaders who treat President Trump as though he is a good faith actor.
Nessels approach is also notable as a stark contrast to how Michigans governor has responded to Trump in his second term. Prior to his inauguration, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who sparred with Trump in his first term, indicated she would find ways to work with him, citing the fact that Michigan helped elect hima reversal from her posture prior to the election. I dont want to pretend like well always agree, but I will always seek collaboration first, Whitmer said in January. I wont go looking for fights, but I wont back down from them either. Im not here to play games. Ive got a job to do.
Since then, Whitmer has visited the White House and met with Trump multiple times, leading the president to openly praise her and note that se had done an excellent job in her capacity as governor. (During the pandemic, Trump had insulted her and described her as that woman in Michigan.)
The governor and I are independently elected office holders, Nessel says. I don’t tell her how to do her job, and she doesn’t tell me how to do mine. But she adds that she has grave concerns about the policy of appeasement and believes that Trump cant be trusted to keep his promises about how he could help the state of Michigan. While Whitmer has engaged with Trump, Nessel has secured several temporary injunctions to push back on his administrations attempts to curtail crucial federal funding allocated to the state; she has also joined many lawsuits brought alongside other attorneys general, targeting Trumps executive order to limit birthright citizenship and the mass layoffs he ordered across the federal workforce.
These orders are just ridiculous
Trumps prolonged attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have also led him to target state and local education agencies: In a memo last month, the administration ordered public schools to eliminate DEI programs or risk losing their federal funding. Nessel was among a coalition of attorneys general who sued in response to prevent the education department from withholding financial support from states like Michigan, which was allocated nearly $1.3 billion in federal funding for fiscal year 2024.
The orders from the federal government are just ridiculous on their face, she says. They don’t even define what they consider to be diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even if one desperately wanted to comply with the federal orders, it would be impossible to do so because there’s no real definition of it. To simply eliminate all of this incredibly important programming and then to threaten our educational systems, whether we’re talking about K-12 [or] colleges and universitiesit’s just so horrific to do that in no sane way and with no interest in looking to see if this is a program that is effective and is actively helping the community that it purports to serve.
Of course its not just formal diversity programs in schools or corporate DEI initiatives that have been a target under this administration. Since his first term, Trump has chipped away at LGBTQ+ rights, escalating many of those efforts in the past few months by issuing wide-ranging executive orders that restrict access to gender-affirming care, erase protections for queer students, and ban transgender people from the militarya policy that was upheld by a Supreme Court ruling in May.
In this moment of intense backlash and upheaval, Nessel feels an especially urgent responsibility to stay the course and advocate for the LGBTQ+ constituents that she represents. It’s more important than ever to have people in these positions who are representatives of the communities and who are fighters for the community, she says. So that people know you do still have somebody in your corner, and you have people who are willing to file these lawsuits and willing to fight on behalf of [those] who oftentimes feel like they have no voice. That’s what I’ve done the entire time I’ve been in officeand that’s what I’m going to continue to do.
In Bowling Green, Kentucky, almost everyone agrees that historic buildings should be preserved amid developments. The same goes for having more restaurants open after 9 p.m.; investing in existing cultural institutions, such as museums; and hiring more therapists for public schools. Only a few proposalslike Bowling Green getting its own Dave & Bustersprove deeply polarizing.
We know this thanks to a project in which nearly 8,000 residents, or about 10% of Bowling Greens population, submitted their opinions more than a million times over the course of a month about the future of their city. Cities tend to run deep with disagreements about everything from infrastructure to drug legalizationjust look at any local Facebook group or subreddit. But the pro-social algorithm used in this project revealed how aligned residents actually were on most topics.
Credit for this undertaking is due to the former first digital minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tang, who advised the project, called What Could BG Be? On a cheerful, interactive website, users can explore city residents hopes and dreams across categories like arts, education, equity and inclusion, housing, and healthcare. The upshot? Most residents have similar desires, and identifying these areas of commonality allows residents to work together toward shared goals.
Tang believes in combating what she calls “anti-social” media. Instead, she’s working to use technology to create opportunities for collaboration, thereby strengthening democracies around the world. Born under martial law in Taiwan in the 1980s, for Tang, democracy is not some fossilized, 200-year-old tradition, like it is to some in the U.S. Rather, she says, it’s something like semiconductors, which she believes should be updated regularly with the availability of more advanced materials.
Now a senior fellow at the safer tech nonprofit Project Liberty Institute, Tang, 44, builds tools that she can leave behind to empower the next generation with a wider canvas. Concerned about social media algorithms that favor rageful engagement over unity, and having done ample work to maintain democracy in Taiwan, shes spreading her pro-democracy ideas globallyeven as a self-professed anarchist.
Tangs childhood was shaped by a heart condition that made waking up each morning uncertain. She internalized the idea of publish, then perish (a riff on academias competitive publish or perish) early and deeply. A prodigy who started coding at age 8 using pencil and paper because she didnt have a computer, she began recording what shed learned before going to bed so others could benefit from her work if she never arose.
As a young adult at the start of the millennium in Taiwan, she built civic participation platforms and worked on a project that eventually became known as G0v, which created public, open-source alternatives to often-opaque government websites.
That community involvement led to participating in the 2014 Sunflower Movement of Taiwanese students demonstrating en masse against a trade deal with China that the students feared threatened their countrys democracy. During weeks of students occupying parliament, Tang helped livestream debates from inside, eventually leading the government to express public support for the students views.
Later that year, Tang was asked to become what she terms a reverse mentor, advising a Taiwanese minister on digital affairs, youth engagement, and open government. She eventually became a minister without portfolio in 2016and the first openly nonbinary cabinet member anywhereand then the countrys first minister of digital affairs in 2022. I famously put not applicable in both the party field and the gender field of my HR application, she says with a laugh. (Tang uses all pronouns and is comfortable with she/her.)
This nonpartisan, label-less approach meshes with Tangs efforts toward depolarization. Its not about parties, it’s not about gendersit is about working with all parties, with all genders, she says. Because of this, shes willing to collaborate with people from all points on the political spectrum. In the U.S., for example, shes met with both far-right activist Laura Loomer and Californias Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.
She previously applied this ethos to her strategy for Taiwans COVID-19 response, in which she created social messaging designed to appeal across demographics that encouraged people to take key health measures (think: Shiba Inus encouraging social distancing), uniting residents toward a common cause. Her work helped raise trust levels in the countrys government from 9% a decade ago to more than 70% by 2020. But she realized it wasnt just Taiwan that could benefit from her work, so shes taken her teachings on the road.
So far in 2025, Tang has traveled to around 20 countries. When we speak in April, shes set to visit another 15 cities in the next 55 days. In most every democratic country shes visited, Tangs heard a similar narrative: that people across the political spectrum are tired of peak polarization.
Nowhere has this polarization proliferated like it has on social media. To that end, Tang has advised U.S. Congress members on the risks of TikToknamely, how China could use it against the American people. She helped with the bipartisan efforts to buy the potentially $50 billion social media giant (still underway).
But that purchase alone wont stanch what Tang sees as social medias inherently anti-social nature, which she says thrives under opacity. Your feed populates with content the algorithm feeds you based on its popularity and your past views, without any insight into where that content is coming from and how its viewed within the community where it originated.
Imagine seeing a post and knowing whether it’s broadly accepted across society or only popular because you’re in that small echo chamber, says Tang. Making that transparent . . . exposes people to the fact that a claim widely believed in one circle might be highly controversial in another. In other words, making context transparent better equips people to avoid spreading misinformation.
After transparency, the next aspect of creating pro-social media entails highlighting unifying content. Bridging content is that which shows agreements across social, political, cultural, geographical, and other typical demographic divisions on social media. Balancing content, Tang says, presents a fair, summarized representation of opposing views, ensuring diverse voices, especially minority ones, are heard in a fair way.
As you have seen in Bowling Green, [these ideas] hold real promise to heal the social fabric, says Tang. It was just the old, parasitic AI that amplified engagement through enragement.
After all, 80% or more agreed on 2,370 ideas pitched by their fellow residents in Bowling Green. The next phase is for volunteers to communicate the projects findings to county leadership so the results can help shape the citys development.
Tang has since brought this same strategy to California, working with Governor Newsom on digital democracy platforms with the Project Liberty Institute and other partners.
The Engaged California project, which launched in February, initially focused on wildfire recovery and prevention but plans to expand to cover al kinds of debated topics in the state and use bridging and balancing to find what Tang calls the uncommon groundthe points people agree on but traditional social medias algorithms often obscure. Ultimately, the aim is to build broad coalitions across political parties.
Overall, these experiments, and her conversations with political figures, have given Tang faith in the U.S. I dont see signs of the American population . . . succumbing to authoritarianism, either in my conversations with Newsom or with Loomer and her crew, Tang says. The U.S. is this grand experiment . . . on how quickly democracy can adapt [in] different emergencies. So far, it has not let the world down.
With Tangs help, the aim is to continue on that trackbut first she says we must rouse ourselves from the bad dream of anti-social media and begin using social media for what Tang refers to as broad listening to one another instead of broadcasting. So far, shes proud of the work shes done. Going back to [the idea of] publishing, then perishing, she says, I think I can safely perish, now.
In his first months in office, Trump unleashed a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives, including outlawing federally funded gender-affirming care and overseeing the National Park Service’s removal of trans and queer references from the Stonewall National Monuments website.
The hostility of the Trump administration toward the queer communityand in particular, transgender individualshas created a fear felt both by LGBTQ+ individuals and the organizations that serve them.
But that doesn’t mean complacency or resignation. Its frightening to all of us, Morgan Gwenwald, a photographer and coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, says. All the more reason to be visible, all the more reason to go out and support whoever and whatever needs support.
Fast Company asked leaders at three New York City-based LGBTQ+ community spacesthe American LGBTQ+ Museum, the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and the NYC LGBT Community Centerto share how these groups are responding to a challenging political moment through legal action, grassroots fundraising, and making the histories of queer people more visible.
Ben Garcia, executive director of the American LGBTQ+ Museum
Leaders at the American LGBTQ+ Museum, which is slated to open in October 2027 in a wing of the New York Historical Society, have spent the past four years fundraising in an increasingly hostile environment.
These executive orders have made a lot of corporate philanthropy just take a beat, says the museums executive director, Ben Garcia, referring to Trumps directive terminating federal funding for DEI programming. Garcia had initially anticipated that about 10% of the museums budget would come from corporate partners. Now, he expects that no more than 3% of it will.
Garcia has worked in museums for 25 years. Accepting this role was an opportunity to really think about a group of ancestors who died in many instances because of their identities as queer people [and] because of the ways in which governments didn’t tend to their needs, he says, referring to the AIDS epidemic.
Under the Trump administration, that conviction takes on a renewed significance, he says, given efforts to ban gender-affirming healthcare for transgender people. The federal government is turning away from their care, their health, their survival, their safety, in ways that echo back to the 1980s, Garcia says.
Despite financial uncertainties and an opening date that has been postponed more than oncethe museum was originally supposed to open in 2024Garcias team has raised $170 million through a combination of philanthropic, city, state, and federal donations (received prior to President Trumps inauguration). Staff are campaigning to bring in another $30 million to build out the space, design programming, and fund traveling exhibitions theyve been producing since 2021.
Additionally, they plan to increase the number of archival works housed at the museum, including photographs of Pride protests and parades, clothing worn by drag and ballroom performers, and the stoles of queer religious leaderssome of whom were defrocked for their sexual orientation, Garcia notes.
The museum began exploring this plan when the Trump administration started to defund and erase information from public archives, says Garcia. We will be collecting a lot more [than we had thought] and making sure that the physical evidencethe receipts for our historyare preserved in organizations that are private nonprofits [and] queer run,” Garcia says. “Right now, that’s the only place that we would be recommending someone keep their stuff.”
Morgan Gwenwald, photographer and coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives
At the Lesbian Herstory Archives, operations have never been confined by government funding or institutional bureaucracy. We don’t have to worry about, What will our board think if we take a banner out to this really rowdy protest or something? We are the board, says Gwenwald, who has been volunteering with the organization since 1979. We have freedom that way, but we have to be very dependent [on] our community because of that.
Throughout the Park Slope, Brooklyn-based organizations 51-year historyor herstory, as members semi-jokingly call itthe LHA has relied solely on grassroots funding to chronicle the lived experiences of lesbians. Materials that the LHA accepts are intentionally broad as well: If you identify as a lesbian and youve made or owned something (including artwork, writing, or possessions), it has a home there.
You can go back and look at, What was that likebeing terrified to go into a gay bar and circling the block in your car before you’ve got enough courage to go in? That’s there in the archives,” Gwenwald says. “It’s in someone’s diary. Those true stories and oral histories are really important because it’s the real thing.
Gwenwald says the archives also serve as a reminder to young people that the queer community has been “pushed back into similar places” before, and what past acts of resistance have looked like.
We work really hard to acknowledge the people who’ve come before, and what they’ve done, [and to] name their names, she says. You have to understand their stories as they were and understand that that is connected to where we are now.
Carla Smith, CEO of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
We were born during the HIV/AIDS epidemic . . . so [this moment] almost feels like were coming full circle to a certain degree, says Carla Smith, CEO of the NYC LGBT Community Center, which offers services including HIV/AIDS care, substance use treatment, records keeping, youth groups, and cultural programming.
Smith, whose tenure began in February 2024, is the center’s third CEO since its opening in 1983, and is overseeing the organization through an unprecedented moment: The center is one of nine LGBTQ+ groups currently suing the federal government.
Filed by Lambda Legal, the lawsuit challenges three of the Trump administrations executive orders, which assert the validity of only two genders and disregard the existence of transgender, nonbinary, and other genderqueer individuals. The suit also comes in response to funding cuts these organizations faced after their work was flagged as equity related, according to a Lambda Legal press release.
We believe it was our responsibility to make sure that we took a stand against what we feel is an injustice,” Smith says, noting that the center has been active in protesting ther attempts to erase transgender and queer individuals from LGBTQ+ history, including from the Stonewall National Monument’s website.
Smith says that the center is facing close to $3 million in federal budget cuts, which represents about 12% of its annual budget. The organization is working with longtime donors to explore potential scenarios and form contingency plans. Decreasing offerings, Smith says, is simply not an option. These are lifesaving services, she says. The alternative is death.
As anti-trans legislation and rhetoric continue to escalate across the U.S.from sweeping state-level bans on gender-affirming care to renewed efforts to bar trans people from public lifetrans nonbinary elite runner Nikki Hiltz and ACLU LGBTQ+ rights lawyer Chase Strangio find themselves at the intersection of justice and representation.
Fresh off a historic Olympic run and record-breaking season in 2024, Hiltz has become one of the most visible trans athletes in the world. In the same year, Strangio, the codirector of the ACLUs LGBT & HIV Project, argued a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging Tennessees ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Though their platforms differ, both emphasize the power of showing up authentically, especially in a political climate that seeks to erase trans existence.
We asked the two changemakers to interview each other about the personal cost of visibility, the meaning of true allyship in business and beyond, and the LGBTQ+ trailblazers who inspire them to push for progress.This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Nikki Hiltz: Within the past four years, [youve] been everywhere fighting the good fight. I came out in 2021, which, at the time, had the most legislation passed [targeting] LGBTQ+ and, specifically, trans people. Every year since, it’s been more and more.
Chase Strangio: I do remember you coming out and a number of cases involving trans athletes in sports. In 2021, the first [anti-trans] sports bill passed, which was in Idaho. I was really focused on sports at the time. Trans inclusion and participation in sports was something that people were very tentative about.
Athletes have such an important, critical voice. Hearing and seeing [you] has been a source of inspiration and a lifeline in terms of representation and advocacy. Just seeing you achieve has been really thrilling because so much of trans discourse often is about all of the ways that we’re targeted. But I really love watching and celebrating trans success.
One thing I’m struggling with a lot right now is that I actually don’t like being [so] visible [in the public eye]. And yet, I don’t want to disappear. It’s become a part of how I do the work. I’m curious how you feel about being visible and being highly seen in all of these different ways.
Hiltz: We’re on a big stage, especially with something like the Olympics. It’s the biggest global sporting event ever. It doesn’t necessarily come naturally for me. I’ve made change through visibility.
After the Olympics, I remember a mom messaging me saying that her kid had come out to her as nonbinary, and she knew what that meant because she followed me. Just by being me and running on the biggest stage, I normalized this identity that’s been so dehumanized. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve been running my fastest after coming out. Where do you see your visibility play a role in your work?
Strangio: In 2013, there was this real absence of people in my field who were trans lawyers speaking out about trans advocacy. It felt important to push myself because I knew on some level that visibility was going to have an impact in both where I’m engaging with lawyers and then also for the public. Leading up to the marriage equality [Supreme Court ruling], this backlash was looming and increasing toward trans people. Very few people who were trans were speaking in the media about being trans in a way that resonated for me. I remember this moment of saying [to myself], You have all of the resources in the world. You have support. You have a responsibility.
I have experienced similar things to those that you mentioned: Young people reaching out to me and saying, Seeing you made me realize I could do this. It’s that reminder that there’s so much fullness in trans life and being a model of that feels absolutely essential. Our power comes through our unapologetic insistence on being ourselves in spaces that don’t expect us to.
Hiltz: I really relate to that. I feel like we’re both just two people who are really good at our jobs.
Strangio: There’s all different types of visibility. The first way in which my visibility sparked change was being an out trans lawyer at the ACLU, a 100-year-old institution. I was the only trans lawyer there. By being visible in that space and engaging with lawyers and other staff, it allowed the ACLU to shift over time, which I think is one of the biggest impacts I’ve had, because it is such a large and powerful institution in legal advocacy. I feel that I am an embodied refutation of [our opponents] arguments about trans life.
Before I arrived, there were just fewer opportunities for staff in the legal department to work directly with trans people who were also lawyers. With more trans people coming into the space, we are able to help our colleagues understand the nuances of our legal arguments and the realities of our lived experiences in more concrete ways.
Hiltz: In my space, specifically track and field, I’ve had so much success. It’s like, you can’t ignore me. The sport has really changed and evolved because they had to make space for me. That has been really cool to witness over the past four years. Okay, we have to get Nikki’s pronouns right, and that comes down to the whole broadcast team. Now, it’s very normal to tune into one of my races and hear them get my pronouns correct. It’s a powerful example for everyone watching.
Strangio: The media climate currently [is] informing [peoples] view of the world with very reductive narratives. We need there to be entry points to change their understanding about trans people. Trans people are an easy target to make those broader political moves that have serious consequences for everyone. With endorsements, have you felt a sort of hesitancy post-Trump?
Hiltz: I think I felt the opposite. I felt more supported. In January, when one of the first things out of [Trumps] mouth was like, there are only two genders, the amount of people that reached out was really cool. Allies are showing up in ways they haven’t before because they see what’s happening. Lululemon is the biggest brand that I work with. They’re my apparel sponsor and a Canadian brand. They’re like, You can come live in Canada if you want.
Strangio: We’ve seen a widespread capitulation among powerful law firms. I think that has sent a really damning message. Thankfully, there have been other law firms that have taken on the administration and fought back. Its a situation of just trying to create the conditions for people to be more brave.
Hiltz: When I think of training for the world championships this year, its never going to be ne big workout that I do that’s going to make the difference. It’s the cumulative work, the day-to-day things. I feel the same way about inclusion. Making sure in your life or work you’re getting people’s pronouns correct. Never assuming people’s sexuality or gender identity. Support the organizations that directly help trans lives.Strangio: You know, white supremacy has allowed, especially under U.S. capitalism, to suggest that diversity is somehow in tension with excellence, when the opposite is true. Diversity feeds excellence and achievement.
I’ve been very disappointed and frustrated with corporations slapping on the rainbow logo while still denying healthcare to their trans employees and refusing to stand up against anti-trans bills while donating money to candidates supporting anti-trans bills. You don’t get to have it both ways. You can’t commodify our fabulous existence and then facilitate the conditions for our eradication. If you want to celebrate us, if you want to enjoy the bounty of queerness, which is plentiful, then you better be working to create the conditions for queer thriving.
In 2016, we did see corporations take a stand when North Carolina passed HB2 [the bathroom bill, mandating individuals use public restrooms based on birth sex, not gender identity], and that was really the end of that. We need more of that. It makes a huge difference in the United States. The single most powerful thing is money. Politicians are driven by financial incentives. I’m very learned at yelling at powerful people. I’m litigious. I sue people in power, and that is satisfying. You get paid less if you work in this capacity as opposed to if you represent corporations, but it means you get to fight back in all of these ways, and I feel grateful for that.
Hiltz: Totally. [We] wouldn’t have it the other way. I feel like every single queer person who wasn’t afraid to show up and be themselves has really influenced me. All the trans influencers just sharing their stories is so powerful because it just normalizes it. My mom [grew up] pre-Title IX, so when I started getting into sports, I was like, Mom, what sports did you play? She was like, Women weren’t allowed to play sports, and it blew my mind.
I want to tell [my kids], It was crazy in the early 2020s. Trans people weren’t allowed to play sports. It was so weird. So I always think that’s the legacy I’m trying to leave. We’re changing the world and it doesn’t seem like it right now, because of whos in power, but we’re on the trajectory to have that one day be the world.
Strangio: I am amazed by just how things can change in a generation or two, not just in terms of the sort of substantive changes, but people’s consciousness of what’s possible. [Transgender immigrant activist] Lorena Borjas and Pauli Murray are two people I credit the most. Lorena for being relentless. Pauli, a Black, likely nonbinary or trans, queer lawyer, shaped both the Black civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement.
Just knowing Paulis legacy was instrumental in getting me into the courtroom. I hope that I’m doing right by Pauli, and I hope that in a few generations there are people who are dreaming up these arguments in far more expansive ways.
Hiltz: I think you’re doing right by Pauli, Chase.
Strangio: Thanks, Nikki. I hope so. We both are.
As the CEO of Patagonia, Rose Marcario stood out as one of the most outspoken voices in business against President Donald Trump during his first term. Under her leadership, Patagonia even sued the Trump administration after he issued a proclamation to shrink public land in two national monuments in Utah.
Now, in the midst of Trumps second term, Marcario is no longer at the helm of the progressive outdoor apparel company, but she’s still taking a stand. As companies pull back on DEI initiatives, backtrack on climate commitments, and generally take a quieter approach to politics, Marcario is doubling down on her belief that businesses canand mustbe the greatest force for good, as she says. Its only a failure of imagination that makes us think any differently.
This isnt a new fight for Marcario. As the CEO of Patagonia, she expanded the outdoor apparel brands environmental commitments, oversaw its foray into sustainable food through Patagonia Provisions, and embarked on ambitious political activism, including Patagonias fight to preserve public land. And she did all that while turning Patagonia from a $100 million company to a $1.5 billion company over the course of her 12-year tenure.
Marcario left Patagonia in 2020. The following year, she became a partner at ReGen Ventures, a climate-focused venture fund investing in early-stage founders who are building regenerative technologies, such as making food from CO2 or cleaning up wastewater while also sequestering carbon emissions. Shes also now the chair of EV company Rivians nonprofit, Rivian Foundation, and founding board member of SPUN, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, a scientific initiative to map and protect the planets trillions of miles of underground fungi. (Marcario was also previously on the board of plant-based meat brand Meati, but left that role about a year ago; Meati is still part of ReGens portfolio.)
Its these wide-ranging roles that allow her to double down on her vision. Being at ReGen gives her a breadth that she didnt have as a CEO, she says. Instead of just steering one company, shes supporting a swath of purpose-driven businesses, investing in solutions across agriculture, sustainable materials (like leather made from food waste), and more.
That includes BurnBot, a startup that is mitigating wildfire risk with automated machines to carry out prescribed burns, for which ReGen led the $20 million Series A funding round in April 2024. Or Aigen, a fleet of solar-powered weeding robots that eliminates the need for harmful herbicides. ReGen led its $12 million Series A in 2023.
Rose has delivered economic outcomes as good as anyonebillions in sales, exponential growth, category-leading profitability . . . and built generational brands that stand for things that everyone else shies away from, says Dan Fitzgerald, managing partner and founder of ReGen.
Even at Patagonia, though, Marcario was thinking beyond apparel. She cofounded the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a program to certify growers on the most climate-friendly agricultural practices, and spearheaded the formation of Patagonia Provisions, the clothing companys sustainable food arm. Those efforts speak to Marcarios ability to be on the forefront of innovation, says Robyn O’Brien, a food and climate expert who consulted with Marcario when she was first conceptualizing Patagonia Provisions. In any industry, there’s always the tip of the sphere, the early adopters, the early whistleblowers. And she’s just consistently been that, says O’Brien.
Supporting an array of purpose-driven entrepreneurs plays to Marcarios strengths. She possesses the rare ability to seereally seeand empower individuals, says Birgit Cameron, cofounder and former head of Patagonia Provisions. By working outside of Patagonia, Marcario can take her bold way of thinking and ripple it out to other companies and industries, Cameron adds.
That was Marcarios goal. I left Patagonia primarily because I felt like I had more to offer the world, she says. Selling outdoor clothing at a time when our planetary crisis is so dire did not feel like the best utilization of my time and my skills. Focusing on entrepreneurship that is based on regenerating the planet, and creating a regenerative future, to me felt like a much more positive and impactful way to spend this next season of my career.
A regenerative future means building an economy based on businesses and technologies that restore ecosystems and planetary resources, rather than just depleting them. We have to base our economic activity in the coming decades not on doing less damage, but on an economy that actively heals, she says. At the beginning of 2025, Marcario penned an op-ed in Time about the importance of this way of doing business. Our current destructive economic model is running out of runway, she wrote.
That sounds alarming, and it is: The world is warming at record levels, and as the planet heats up, economic performance goes down. Every 1 degree Celsius that the Earth’s temperature increases can be linked to a 12% drop in global GDP. The Trump administration is exacerbating this crisis. The president has once again pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, decimated millions in climate research, weakened environmental protections, and has given industrial companies free rein to pollute. Hes also launched attacks against DEI programs, causing some companies to back away from their commitments to inclusion and diversity, including their support for LGBTQ+ rights.
Marcario isnt shrinking in the face of those challenges. Its so important, as an LGBTQ person, to be out, to be visible, to support especially our trans community that is being used as a political tool right now in such a negative way, she says. It becomes even more necessary to double down and to show courage and leadership.
Despite these challenges, she says shes still hopeful about the future, especially when she looks at ReGens portfolio. Along with BurnBot and Aigen, ReGen has invested in Arkeon, which turns CO2 into proteins; Banyu Carbon, which sequesters carbon dioxide from seawater; and Ulysses, which uses robots to restore seagrass; among other companies.
These are all solutions that are about making the world better and more livable for everybody, Marcario says. [These companies are] not spending time debating whether inclusivity and diversity is a good thing. They know it, and they’re moving forward. Shes also excited to be working with chef Dan Barber who started Row 7 Seed Company, which has recently been rolling out its new non-GMO breeds of produce at Whole Foods, and shes looking forward to the debut of Rivians R2 electric truck, set to begin production in the first half of 2026.
Marcario is supporting all these innovations because she doesnt change her values based on how the political winds are blowing. She advises other business leaders who want to have a long-lasting impact to do the same. Cultivate your courage, dont obey in advance, trust that customers will vote with their dollars and reward your commitments to your long-term values, she says. The brands of long-term views, strong identities and followership, they don’t equivocate.
Morgan Lombardi, Keurigs senior director of product management, believes pod coffee makers have become too big, too mechanical, and maybe even a little bit ugly. Weve seen that coffee makers, including our own, have started to feel more and more like a machine, she says. They are also getting increasingly bigger while kitchens are getting progressively smaller. Which is why Keurig is introducing the K-Mini Mate, a 4-inch-wide brewer that costs $79.99 and launches exclusively at Target starting June 29.After seven years watching consumer behavior at Keurig, Lombardi tells me she observed that people were starting to view their morning brew routine as an obligation rather than a moment of pleasure. Her team discovered that consumers wanted their morning coffee ritual to feel like this wonderful little momentrather than a mechanical click-CLACK! chore. The coffee maker needed to be gentler to the eye and to the touch, and it also needed to be much smaller. Both were hard challenges, she says, because the current puncturing mechanisms for Keurigs brewers are too unwieldy to allow for a subtler, smaller design.[Photo: Keurig]The space problem drives everythingKitchen real estate drives modern appliance design decisions. Nobodys kitchen is getting any bigger, Lombardi explains. Yet, coffee makers remain essential equipment to turn on human brains in the morning, and they need to be there 24/7not taken out of a cabinet. They require permanent positioning, she says, creating a design constraint that forces manufacturers to think smaller.The most significant technical challenge to achieve the smaller footprint involved redesigning what Keurig calls the puncture mechanism. Standard Keurig brewers use a mechanical crunching motion to pierce K-Cup pods; a big handle pushes down to move the array of needles that open holes in that pod. If you have ever used a Keurig machine, it feels a little like pushing down the handle to turn off the Death Star. The standard Keurig mechanism feels like you are crunching something inside, Lombardi says.[Photo: Keurig]To enable the smaller brewer size, the puncturing mechanism needed to be much shorter: The space between the brewer mechanism and the bottom of the brewer needed to be able to fit a travel mug [around 7 inches], she says.[Photo: Keurig]They managed to reengineer the mechanism and change its position, which allowed them to get rid of the crunching handle and turn it into a flat surface that matches the cylindrical shape of its front. The new mechanism doesnt give you the same hard resistance as the previous one, which allowed Keurig to use soft-spring open and closing. She thinks that this alone creates a feeling thats more human, making the act of making coffee more like a soft handshake and less like destroying coffee pods inside a plastic crunching machine.[Photo: Keurig]A new design languageThe resulting machine is much more attractive. The design language features softer radius curves compared with Keurigs standard angular aesthetic. The brewer uses rubberized touchpoints alongside ABS plastic construction to make it feel softer to the touch, too. A small rubberized tab on the top helps you to take the water deposit out, requiring just a finger to easily remove the top. The water reservoir also sits flat on counters without tipping over, like a water jar.[Photos: Keurig]The resultavailable in black, red, and greenis a machine that brews up to 12 ounces of coffee and is about 33% smaller than Keurigs previous smallest model. One that, perhaps more importantly, doesnt look like your great aunts brewer from yesteryear, but like a modern piece of design.The companys research revealed that younger consumers entering the coffee-maker market prioritize simplicity and visual appeal over advanced features. Generation Z buyers need coffee makers for college or first apartments, but they dont have strong preferences about brewing functionality.[Photo: Keurig]According to Lombardi, consumer response has been great during testing. From initial foam prototypes through in-home use studies, people fell in love with this productand theyre saying, you know, its small. I havent seen anything like this. Its just really cute. When can I have it?She also tells me that the K-Mini Mate represents the first product in what will become Keurigs new visual brand language across its entire lineup. Keurig updates its visual brand language every five years to match shifting consumer preferences, she points out. Future models will incorporate similar aesthetic principles while adding features like larger water tanks. So, thats definitely good news for Keurig fans everywhere.
How often do you leave work thinking, Wow, that was fun! Once a week? Once a month? Never? If you arent having funreal funit may be time to rethink your work life, says Bree Groff, author of Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously).
The idea that work needed to be fun didnt hit home for Groff until her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2022. She took a leave of absence from her job at a New York-based transformation consulting firm to care for her and her father, who had Alzheimers disease. After her mother passed away, she went back to work part time with a new perspective.
One of the things that became obvious while taking care of my parents is that at some point, well run out of Mondays, she says. They aren’t a renewable resource. So, what are we doing to our lives when we’re wishing away five out of seven days of every week?
A common attitude is that work is called work for a reason; its something to get through to get a paycheck. The flip side is: Love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life. This phrase suggests that the solution to work being drudgery is that it should be your passion and your identity. That notion also didn’t sit right with Groff. Many of the leaders shed worked with were pouring themselves into their work, but they were also sacrificing their health, sleep, and relationships, hoping for a reward that would come someday in the future.
It seemed to me that the answer was somewhere in the middle, Groff says. Every day that I spend at work comes out of the finite bank of days that I have on the planet. What would it take to have fun today?
If youre not having fun, Groff offers two places to start.
Micro Acts of Mischief
Too often, people feel they need to be their most buttoned-up, professional, palatable versions of themselves at work. But once we put on a business mask, we stifle all of our vitality, play, and joy, Groff says.
Instead, introduce micro acts of mischief into the day. These are moments of diversion to the work culture or routine. If you have to adhere to a dress code, for example, wear some ridiculous socks. Or add a joke or ridiculous font to a presentation deck. Or literally mix things up, she suggests.
One day we rearranged the office furniture, pulling comfy chairs over, so we could all hang out a little bit better, Groff says. The facilities team wasnt pleased with us, but it felt a little mischievous, sneaky, and fun in a way that made our team chuckle.
Micro Acts of Connections
You can also cultivate fun through micro acts of connections, including camaraderie and self-expression. Groff recommends sending a coworker a direct message or email, expressing appreciation for something they did. You can also ask a colleague to grab coffee.
Make it light, she says. The idea is to gain a sense of the people you’re working with, knowing a little bit about their lives outside of work. Where do they live? Do they have a pet? Its getting to know them as a human and not just about the work at hand.
Also, look for places to show your personality by putting your own stamp on your work. This isn’t just for creative marketing professionals, Groff says. A barista at a coffee shop can make latte art. Or a project manager can make a brilliant project timeline. How can you put your stamp on your work?
Connection and self-expression humanize the workplace, Groff says. We should like the people that we’re spending our days with. Sometimes, we’re spending more time with our colleagues than our families or significant others.”
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Groff says you can usually tell if you’re having fun, and you can always tell if you’re not. It’s almost childlike in its sensibility. I define fun as a sense of play, experimentation, and vitality. My metric for the day is: How many minutes have I spent laughing?
Dont confuse fun-looking workplaces with fun work, Groff adds. Theres a difference between thinking of fun as icing on the work cake, or fun as being the cake itself, she says. If we look at fun as the icing, thats where Ping-Pong tables or happy hour get a bad rap. You cannot fill your days with Ping-Pong and happy hour, or nothing gets done. Id also argue that is a superficial sliver of fun.
Having fun at work is using your skills in a way that makes you feel good because you contributed and made an impact on customers, clients, or other parts of the organization. While there is a business argument for having more fun at work, such as increased productivity and performance, the existential argument is much stronger.
If I’m a manager, I don’t want to end my career thinking, I really extracted every last hour from that employee or I made them perform better for the business, Groff says. I want to make sure that these humans have made good use of their days on the planet. That they’ve gotten to contribute joyfully and profoundly.
For nearly 60 years, California has been able to set its own standards around auto emissions that are stricter than the federal governments, thanks to a special exception for the state under the Clean Air Act. California has used that waiver to implement aggressive emissions standards that prioritize the sale of EVs, and that aim to whittle down the sale of gas-powered vehicles until their complete ban by 2035.
Now Trump has signed a joint resolution from Congress that overturns that California waiverand essentially kills Californias efforts to accelerate EV adoption (California has sued to stop the move). If its implementation is allowed, the resolution wont affect only California residents, but would hurt the entire countrys EV efforts, and push the U.S. further behind the rest of the world.
California has probably been the largest factor in accelerating EV adoption over the past decade, says Jeremy Michalek, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the schools Vehicle Electrification Group. California has used its Clean Air Act waiver to set requirements for automakers to sell a certain percentage of vehicles that release zero tailpipe emissions (a requirement which, a few hydrogen powered prototypes aside, can currently be met only with electric vehicles). California has become the biggest market for EVs in the country, accounting for nearly a third of all EV sales in the U.S.
The California effect
When California sets stricter regulations around auto emissions, it changes what sorts of cars are available for drivers everywhere. Thats been a huge driver in forcing the industry to provide additional options, like to roll out EVs in different market segments, Michalek says. If California sets stricter standards than the rest of the country, automakers have to decide, Are we going to try to customize different vehicles for different markets and deal with all of the logistics and cost, or are we just going to make all vehicles comply with what California is doing? (Californias stricter rules also catalyzed stronger federal standards because the state has long been a part of federal emissions negotiations.)
This California effect has been noticed with other environmental regulations, too. A state law requiring product label warnings for toxic chemicals known to cause cancer led to chemical exposures decreasing for people across the country. When brands make a product to meet Californias strict environmental regulations, they usually sell the same one across the country, and everyone benefits.
If Californias stricter auto standards go away, it stands to reason that the entire country would lose out on that benefit, too. That wouldnt happen immediately: It takes about five years for automakers to design and bring new vehicles to market. But the movewhich California is already suing the Trump administration overadds to the general uncertainty the auto industry is facing.
Automakers lobbied the Senate to end California’s ban on new gas car sales by 2035, and have spoken out in support of Trump’s recent move, saying there should be one national standard. But there’s still uncertainty because of the rapid changes to regulations, Michalek says.
The U.S. falling behind in EV transition
This move combined with the potential repeal of EV tax credits, Trumps tariffs, and his administrations efforts to weaken federal auto emissions standards all hurt the auto industrys ability to plan long term. And if automakers cant make investments in local EV battery factories or onshoring parts of the EV supply chain, that means the U.S. will continue to fall behind in the overall EV transition.
The move to EVs is already on a strong trajectory, Michalek says. Changing Californias emissions standards wont totally stop that transition, but it will slow it down. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is already ahead of us, he says. China in particular is an EV leaderwith technological advancements that have made ultra-affordable EVs a realityand even countries across Europe are now outpacing the U.S. in EV sales.
Because of the Trump administrations attacks on the Inflation Reduction Act as well, billions of dollars of investments into the EV industry have been canceled since the start of his second term, including plans for EV and battery factories. Part of the goal of the IRA was to diversify and relocate the supply chain for climate tech like EVs, moving it either into the U.S. or to its allies. But these pullbacks are making that plan more difficult.
So by getting further behind, Michalek adds, the risk is that if we’re going to have to make this [EV] transition anyway, and we’re lagging behind in building the industry to make the technology, then when we do have to transition, we’ll be kind of at the mercy of other countries that are dominating the technology. Eventually, he adds, were going to be at a disadvantage for not having made these investments sooner.
Chaos for automakers and states
Repealing Californias waiver could also hurt automakers that focus on EVs. Within the states (and federal) regulations, theres been the option for automakers that werent able to meet the standards to buy credits from companies that did, so that on average the industry is meeting these goals.
If there are some automakers who wouldn’t really sell electric vehicles unless they were forced to, because that’s not where their profit center is, it enabled them to transition some funding to other automakers that were more focused on electric vehicles, like newcomers like Tesla, Michalek says. He credits Californias stricter standards for why, at least in part, Tesla was able to survive its early years.
California is currently the only state able to set its own auto emissions standards that are stricter than federal ones, but the Clean Air Act does allow other states to adopt California’s regulations, and 17 states, including Oregon, New York, and Massachusetts, have done so. In that sense, removing Californias waiver also directly affects what those other states can do around auto emissions. (Ten other states have joined Californias lawsuit against the Trump administration over its effort to revoke its waiver.)
In attempting to revoke the waiver, Trump went through Congress, but California Governor Gavin Newsom says that move was illegal. Its not clear what the timeline will be for a resolution to the lawsuit. In the meantime, Michalek says, there’s a sustained sense of uncertainty for automakers. The chao of it is a deterrent to investment in the industry, and in planning for future vehicles.
Fast Company recently posed the question: Why isnt your workplace wellness program reducing stress? The answer, as the article rightly pointed out, isnt about bad intentionsits about bad execution. Most wellness initiatives are still treating symptoms, not causes.
But we need to go even deeper. Workplace wellness isnt failing because its frivolous. Its failing because employees arent engaging with it.
Stressed and burned out
Corporate America spends an estimated $65 billion a year on wellness perks, from mindfulness apps to meditation pods yet 77% of employees still report feeling stressed, and 82% say theyre at risk of burnout.
In the largest academic study of U.S. programs, fewer than half of eligible employees ever engaged with the resources on offer (RAND Corporation).
Digital-only benefits fare even worse: app sprawl and discovery fatigue mean that most perks are forgotten before theyre used.
A meditation app buried in a browser tab cant move the needle on mental health, absenteeism, or retention.
Its easy to blame employees for being disengaged, or to point fingers at toxic culture. But the truth is more subtleand more solvable.
Complexity kills engagement
When HR teams assemble a buffet of stand-alone appsfinancial coaching here, sleep tools there, therapy platforms somewhere elseevery login is another cognitive task. Overwhelmed workers dont skip your yoga discount because they dislike yoga. They skip it because they dont remember where the link lives.
At YuLife, we partnered with the University of Essex to study this problem. We found that bundling insurance, rewards, virtual care, and micro-challenges into one gamified experience radically changed engagement patterns:
Users take healthy actions on 20 of 30 days, double the norm
54% return monthly, 50% engage daily
Daily steps rose 13%, equivalent to adding 4.5 years of life expectancy
Self-reported stress dropped 53%, productivity rose 57%
Crucially, activity inside the app predicted use of other benefits. Those included 4× more Employee Assistance Program utilization, 2.4× more virtual GP visits, an 11.5% drop in absenteeism, and a 2.75% drop in turnover
Engagement is the missing variable
Wellness programs arent underperforming because employees dont care. Theyre underperforming because the programs werent designed with real behavioral engagement in mind.
Three blockers we can eliminate today:
Perk fragmentationConsolidate your well-being tools. If it takes more than two clicks or logins, it’s too much. Build a single front door, ideally integrated where work already happens (Slack, Teams, a unified app).
Slow-burn rewardsPoints that take months to redeem lose meaning. When users can swap earned coins for gift cards the same week, engagement jumps 30% and rises again with leaderboards or friendly duels.
One-size-fits-all contentA new parent, a cyclist, and a burnt-out manager dont need the same nudges. Personalised AI-driven prompts that respond to user behaviour drive a 3x increase in healthy habits.
Well-being is infrastructure, not a perk
We often hear that wellness is hard to measure. But thats usually a reflection of low engagement, not flawed strategy. At 20% adoption, noise drowns out signals. At 50%+, the ROI becomes clear, including a 5% drop in claims costs for employers integrating preventive data into group-risk underwriting.
If fewer than half your people open the app, the program doesnt work. No matter how many perks you fund.
The takeaway?
Treat well-being engagement as a performance indicator like churn, CSAT, or NPS. Then:
Start with one frictionless entry point
Deliver generous, rapid-fire rewards
Use behavioral science (and yes, a little fun) to sustain momentum
Track outcomes investors care about: utilisation, risk, absenteeism, retention
We dont need more perks. We need platforms people actually use. And that starts by treating engagement as the product and not the afterthought.
