If you ask a doctor about ADHD, they will tell you that its a developmental disorder characterized by traits of forgetfulness, impulsivity, and disorganization. However, there are so many great qualities associated with ADHD that dont get discussed, just some of which include creativity, resilience, problem-solving, and hyper focus.
Neurodivergent people are the worlds best problem-solvers. We have had to practice it for our entire lives. From a very young age we have had to find unique solutions to really difficult problems because we are intrinsically a little bit different.
We are also great at reading other people. We can hyper focus on peoples micro communications, pick up on tiny fluctuations in tone of voice, and little changes in facial expressions that neurotypical people miss. We can recognize patterns in peoples mannerisms, which enables us to judge someones character extremely effectively.
Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
People with ADHD people are criticised around 20,000 more times than your average child. We have heard things like, why are you being lazy, stop fidgeting, and be normal. This means that as adults we are often more sensitive to rejection, and might experience something called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which causes intense pain triggered by real or perceived rejection.
For example, if you dont explicitly invite an ADHD person to a social event, we will assume you dont actually want us there. If you say, “come if you want,” we will think that our presence at that social event is a nuisance, and might even think you hate us as well.
Similarly, if you dont tell someone with ADHD that you explicitly like them, we will assume that you tolerate us. And as a manager, if you ask an ADHD person for a quick chat, we might assume you want a quick chat so you can fire us. Carefully consider your wording and make sure to balance any feedback with positive comments. Be explicit and intentional when sending invitations to work events and briefly explain what any quick chats will cover.
Integrating regular breaks
When RSD hits us, it hits hard. We might need a minute to remove ourselves from any situation, whether thats going to get some fresh air, or pacing up and down the street for a while. Allowing for breaks and not questioning it will help put space between the stimulus and reaction, allowing our brain time to regulate itself again and not be influenced by intense feelings.
The pause also allows us to practise self-compassion and not react impulsively in the moment. If someone asks for a minute, it might be the break they need to return back fully focussed.
Burnout and vulnerability
Its common for ADHD employees to overwork, stay up late into the night, and push ourselves to the limit. They have spent their whole lives feeling as if theyre not good enough, so its no surprise they might feel like they have something to prove.
The early warning signs are unique to all of us and we all need to be aware of our own, but its sometimes possible to spot it in other people as well. Some of these early signs might include: becoming easily agitated, forgetting things that would usually be remembered, becoming less patient, and neglecting self-care.
One way leaders can help is by creating culture of psychological safety, where your employees feel able to speak out if they are struggling. If your culture is about purely celebrating wins then you are not really creating an environment where other people feel safe to ask for help if they need it.
Its important to set the tone from above that its okay to be vulnerable and speak out about anything that might be causing stresswhether its social interactions, difficulties with tasks, or deadline difficulties.
Remember that everyone is unique
Many leaders think that a blanket accommodations policy will be beneficial to everyone. You often see companies say that they will integrate movement breaks, adopt flexible working, and normalize fidget toys and noise-cancelling headphones.
These are great, but leaders need to recognize that everyone has a brain as unique as their fingerprint, and everyones needs will be different. It’s more important to create a culture of psychological safety, where people feel empowered to speak up and ask for the specific support they need to perform their job well.
This is an edition of Plugged In, a weekly newsletter by Fast Company global technology editor Harry McCracken. You can sign up to receive it each Friday and read all issues here.
Hello and welcome back to Plugged In.
We at Fast Company are uncommonly fond of the year 1995. After all, it’s the year we officially began ongoing publication, after putting out a test issue in 1993. But there’s a more straightforward reason why we decided to publish a series of stories this week about some of 1995’s most significant products and developments. Last year, we produced a package paying tribute to 1994, and it turned out so well we decided to continue the tradition of 30-year-old flashbacks.
Here are the seven stories that make up our 1995 Week:
How Sega’s surprise Saturn launch backfiredand changed gaming forever
‘Johnny Mnemonic’ predicted our addictive digital future
This IBM ThinkPad was astounding in 1995and still is
1995 was the year the internet grew up
Windows 95’s look and feel are more impressive than ever
How Newgrounds accidentally became one of online culture’s defining sites
The AOL hacking tool that invented phishing and inspired a generation
Until we began work on these stories, I’d forgotten that in 2015 we published a similar roundup of articles timed to 20 years post-1995 (I told you it’s a special year to us.) The topics were entirely different from what we picked this time, so what the heckhere are those pieces, too:
1995: The Year Everything Changed
What it Was Like to Build a World Wide Web Site in 1995
What it Was Like to Attend Hacker High When They Filmed Hackers at My High School
How Match.com Has Helped Us Hook Up and Find Love Since 1995
Submerged as we are in a never-ending deluge of news about AI and other pressing subjects, it’s always nice to have an excuse to briefly press pause on concerns of the day and look back. At the same time I get nervous about growing too nostalgic. Any objective assessment of tech circa 1995 should acknowledge that in many ways it was terrible.
For starters, the PCs were disastrously crash-prone and prone to eating your work in a way that’s far less common today. Sans modern conveniences such as USB and Wi-Fi, they made tasks as fundamental as adding a printer into a bit of a science project. Online search tools were rudimentary, digital photography wasn’t yet capable of competing with film, and downloading software such as Netscape Navigator over a dial-up connection took so long that it was borderline impractical.
In short, I don’t want to go back. Yet thinking about the period as we worked on our new series, I also developed a new appreciation for what we’ve lost. Many of the ways technology has changed everyday life for the better were yet to comebut so were most of its downsides.
In case you’ve forgotten the state of computing in 1995or weren’t around to experience ita study from October of that year provides some helpful context. Conducted by the Times Mirror Center, it reported that only 32% of Americans used computers. Of them, only a subset went onlinetypically a few times a week. They typically sent three email messages per day and received five. Just 32% of those online said they would miss it “a lot” if they couldn’t do it anymore, a far lower percentage than the newspaper readers and cable TV subscribers who deemed those media essential.
In other words, the digital world didn’t matter all that much, even to most of the relatively few Americans who were online. It’s tough to have an unhealthy relationship with a technology if you use it only occasionally and can easily see yourself living without it.
Nobody checked their smartphone a jillion times a day in 1995: Smartphones barely existed and weren’t yet connected to the internet. Even laptops were a rarity, owned by only 18% of people who had a PC, according to the Times Mirror study. Instead, computing was still nearly synonymous with desktop PCs, and going online was a conscious decision involving a dial-up modem and a phone line. Unless you had two lines, you couldn’t even check your email if someone else in the house was making a call.
Compared to a modern computer or phone with a persistent internet connection, a 1995 PC on dial-up was a Fortress of Solitude. Hackers were already wreaking havoc when they couldread Alex Pasternack’s story on “AOHell” for proofbut with e-commerce and online banking still rare, there was a limit to how much damage they could do. Being overrun in notifications was unknown, because there was no practical way to deliver them to a computing device. (Even Pointcast, the famously bandwidth-sucking alert system that pioneered “push” technology, didn’t arrive until 1996.)
The business models that powered access to technology in 1995 also feel healthier than those of 2025. Online advertising was already getting rollingWired.com ran the web’s first banner ad in October 1994but the days of tech giants collecting vast amounts of personal data and using it to target adertising were still in the future. People paid for tech products with money, not by sacrificing some of their privacy.
In retrospect, it all seems downright Edenesque. But the consumers of 1995including medidn’t look at it that way, because we didn’t know what was to come. The Times Mirror survey says that 50% of respondents were already concerned about computers being used to invade privacy. Some 24% considered themselves “overloaded with information,” though perhaps they were more stressed out by an excess of cable channels than anything they were doing on a computer.
The Times Mirror Center later changed its name to the Pew Research Center and continues to survey Americans about their attitude toward technology. In April, it reported that twice as many adults thought that AI’s impact over the next 20 years would be negative than those who expected it to be positive. I can’t help but think that the past three decades have left us more jaded than we were in the 1990sand that it’s a fair reaction to what the tech industry has given us.
Will the tech of 2045 or 2055 prompt reveries for the simpler times of 2025? It’s a scary thought. I repeat: I have no desire to return to the tech of 1995. But understanding it better can help gird us for what’s next. That was among our goals for 1995 Week, and I hope it shows in our stories.
More top tech stories from Fast Company
Slack expands AI features with enterprise search, translation, and smart summariesNew offerings will be able to draft documents and answer questions based on knowledge housed in Slack and linked cloud systems.Read More
How to launch a great product: Advice from a Google execIt comes down to balancing the three Ps: people, politics, and product.Read More
YouTube Shorts algorithm steers users away from political content, study findsResearchers say YouTube’s algorithm downplays political topics in favor of viral entertainment to keep users watching.Read More
This beloved retro gaming computer is making a comebackand it’ll cost you $299A reimagined Commodore 64 is now available for preorder, offering nostalgia with updated specs and support for classic games.Read More
Inside the redesign that will make you actually want to use NextdoorThe hyperlocal app is moving away from its message board layout with a new focus on local news, real-time alerts, and AI suggestions.Read More
Gmail’s new ‘Manage Subscriptions’ tool could change email marketing foreverGoogle is rolling out a powerful unsubscribe feature in Gmail that gives users more controland marketers a reason to rethink their strategy.Read More
Known for launching Broadway hits and hosting celebrity casts, the storied Williamstown Theatre Festival is writing its next chapter, both onstage and behind the scenes. With a new creative director, expanded programming, and what it describes as a startup mentality, the festival aims to become the “Coachella of theater,” bringing the legacy institution to newfound cultural relevancy.
The festival kicked off its 71st iteration on Thursday, July 17, on the picturesque campus of Williams College in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. While not necessarily a household name to non-theater fans, it has been a major springboard for talent for decades, helping to launch the careers of renowned actors Christopher Walken, Bradley Cooper, and Viola Davis, and playwrights Dominique Morisseau, Terrence McNally, and Michael R. Jackson, among many others.
Yet despite its storied legacy, the festival is facing similar struggles as its peers. Nonprofit theaters across the country have been hurting since the pandemic, struggling to regain their pre-COVID audiences, leading to a number of closures, fewer shows, and scaled-back programming.
“The traditional nonprofit theater model isn’t sustainable anymore, and our choice in this moment was really innovation over inertia,” Raphael Picciarelli, managing director of strategy and transformation at Williamstown, told Fast Company.
While before, programming centered on single theater productions, with around seven plays spread out over 12 weeks, the new model condenses the festival’s timeline, offers experiences beyond sit-down shows, and brings big names like Jeremy O. Harris and Kaia Gerber to the mix.
Jeremy O. Harris (left) and Raphael Picciarelli [Photo: Matthew Leifheit/courtesy Williamstown Theatre Festival]
“We’re really reimagining our entire operating and business model,” Picciarelli says.
With big risk comes big investment: The festival is increasing its budget for this summer to $8 million, up from $4.7 million last year. The increase is made possible with help from a number of large anonymous donors, the festival says, while the organization is actively pursuing new revenue streams.
Staging transformation
Picciarelli first joined Williamstown at a “point of reflection,” he says, following a series of work culture concerns and rising costs in the industry, and with many live theater organizations still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
With a background in consulting (he advised C-suite executives on how to change organizations from the inside out) in addition to live theater, Picciarelli began consulting for the festival during the summer of 2023.
“The leadership and board made a very sound, responsible decision to pull back in terms of programming and to take a second to really think about the future,” he says, referencing a more limited 2023 repertoire.
Early on, Picciarelli identified the organization’s strongest traits, its small 14-person full-time team and renowned legacy, which combined with the festival’s yearn for change proved to be a perfect opportunity for transformation.
“There was a real desire for innovation, which you don’t always see at legacy institutions,” he says. “Innovation requires the space to try and fail and try again.”
For instance, last year the festival held a weekend event with 16 shows to test how many shows could be staged simultaneously.
It turns out 16 was too much,” says Antonello Di Benedetto, assistant managing director and a staff member of nine years. “That’s how we settled on eight for this year. We’re going to see if that is the right cadence, or if we need to increase it or decrease it next year. But it’s totally a prototype.”
Serving as an experiment for the future of the festival, and theater industry as a whole, Williamstown is spearheading change with cues from the private sector, and startups in particular.
“Adopting a startup mindset, as opposed to a more institutional mindset, is about testing new formats, rethinking how people access the work, and creating this more flexible, nimble infrastructure to really support that right,” Picciarelli says.
New strategies, big names
Operationally, one of the biggest additions to the festival is the creation of its “creative collective,” a group of multidisciplinary guest curators set to rotate every year, led by Harris, who rose to fame as the writer of Broadway’s Tony-nominated Slave Play.
“A key part of this innovation in terms of bringing new voices into the artistic process [is] really breaking open the curation model,” Picciarelli says.
The collective includes Gerber with Alyssa Reeder; Christopher Rudd; and Alex Stoclet, who are leading the literary, dance, and music curation, respectively. The introduction of musical elements and dance as alternative forms to experience storytelling is also a part of the festival’s transformative push.
Additionally, the festival is adopting a multiday ticketing approach. Its like the Coachella or Sundance of theater, where you’re bringing people together over an extended period of time to just immerse themselves,” Di Benedetto says.
In terms of onstage programing, organizers are also taking risks and attracting known talentfor instance, by staging the first opera in the festival’s history, or bringing actresses like Pamela Anderson and Amber Heard to this year’s productions. Visitors can also enjoy visual and audio installations, nature walks, comedy shows, and even a show in an ice rink.
Building the right guardrails
Beyond what visitors can expect to see while at the festival, a lot of the transformation has taken place behind the curtain to build a new work culture.
As is common in the theater industry, labor at the festival had been unregulated and oftentimes unpaid. In 2021, the Los Angeles Times reported on a eight-page letter sent to the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s organizers and board of trustees outlining a toxic work culture and pattern of safety hazards in the organization.
“People overworked themselves because they were doing it for the love of the art. But we have to be honestit’s also a profession,” Di Benedetto says. “If any other industry behaved in the same way, it would never hold water.”
He adds that the theater industry “is now finally catching up to the idea that this is also a job.”
Organizers are trying to prove there can be a business model in theater that is not reliant on exploitation. Since 2021, all seasonal workers at the festival are paid regardless of their position, including apprentices and interns. Additionally, while seasonal workers could previously be staffed to do various things, from electrical to costume work, positions are now structured with clear expectations.
Written guidelines are also enforced to keep workers and the organization accountable, and to ensure that all team members are treated equitably and respectfully.
For instance, daily and weekly hour caps and mandatory breaks throughout the day are now in practice. A list of culture values and statements was also developed ahead of this year’s festival, and will be available on the newly launched “company hub, which centralizes information for staff.
“As we are in this startup phase and as much as we’re really pushing forward in inventive ways, we also know where we’ve been,” Picciarelli says. “Part of this work is also continuing to be cognizant and review and be careful with our internal practices to really ensure that this is a healthy, respectful, and sustainable place to beand to work with that, building the right guardrails, investing in our people in the right way.”
Big changes are coming to the web in the days ahead. On July 25, the U.K.s Online Safety Act will take effect, bringing sweeping changes to how users experience the internet. Within the next week, websites like Reddit and Bluesky will begin asking users to verify their ageeither by providing official ID, bank details that prove their age, or a selfie analyzed by age-estimation software.
The act mandates that platforms implement highly effective age verification measures to prevent underage users from accessing inappropriate contentwhether thats pornography, violent material, or other age-inappropriate content.
This follows a Supreme Court decision in June requiring users in Texas to provide personal information to access pornographic websites. There are growing concerns that what began with adult sites could soon expand to more general platforms. We can expect trickle-down verification creep, warns social media expert Matt Navarra. First porn, then gambling, then AI content tools, and eventually even comment sections.
Some observers argue that a new era of internet regulation is beginning. Theyre calling it the “hall pass era”: To go anywhere or do anything online, users will have to hand over personal information to a range of providers. This shift towards a more ID-locked web is one of the biggest, messiest evolutions weve seen online in years, says Navarra.
The era of the anonymous internet died a long time ago, but pseudonymity remains, and we are watching the death flows of the free internet, says Myles Jackman, a U.K. obscenity lawyer opposed to the upcoming changes.
Carolina Are, a fellow at Northumbria Universitys Center for Digital Citizens, acknowledges the intent behind age checks but warns that ID-based systems could backfire. She argues they risk exposing usersespecially marginalized groupsto privacy violations, given how much data platforms already collect. Just look at people being refused entry into the U.S. due to social media posts, she says.
David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agrees that the motivationsstopping bots and protecting kidsare understandable. But he calls the proposed age restrictions overly broad and rights-infringing. He notes they could harm adults who depend on anonymity, such as whistleblowers, sex workers, or domestic abuse survivors.
Navarra expresses frustration at how open platforms are being forced to bend to a conservative worldview. Bluesky requiring official ID is the ultimate irony, he says. This platform literally was born out of Twitter’s decentralization dream [of] open, federated, anti-censorship idealsand now you need a passport to post.
According to Greene, the issue reflects not a lot of deep thinking about the nature of the problem. Are agrees, suggesting the shift favors corporate interests over the public good. While [ID tech] has potential, its being adopted like every other technology: creating a gold rush climate for ID checkprivatecompanies that will expand like tech start ups and with a move fast and break things approach rather than a public sector, do no harm approach, she says.
The already complicated process of paying back student loans just got even more complicated.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision to let President Donald Trump resume hollowing out the Department of Education, lifting the lower court injunction that halted his efforts back in May. (SCOTUS provided no rationale for the decision, other than the lack of any law expressly prohibiting itnot unlike Air Bud rules.)
The decision allowed Trump to continue laying off Education employees by the hundreds, and to offload some of the departments key programs to other agencies. The potential disruption in loan servicing systems and processes that may follow, however, is just the latest financial challenge student loan borrowers are now up against.
Student borrowers have walked an uncertain path out of the pandemic. In August 2022, during a years-long federal pause on payments that would ultimately end one year later, President Joe Biden attempted to issue a sweeping tide of debt cancellation. He invoked the HEROES Act, a 9/11-era law that lets the Department of Education augment student loans during a national crisis, but the move was quickly challenged by Republican senators and blocked by lower courts. SCOTUS eventually struck down the mass loan forgiveness effort in June 2023, ruling that the president lacked statutory authority.
In response, the administration pivoted to selective work-arounds, ultimately approving more than $180 billion in student-debt relief for more than 5 million borrowers by January 2025. A lot has changed in the months since, including the May introduction of involuntary debt collection for some of the 5.3 million student borrowers in default, after years of pandemic-era leniency.
Many of the changes, however, have arrived in just the past two weeks, and they’re going to have long-lasting consequences.
One big beautiful debacle
Considering all the competing concerns around Trumps puerilely titled Big Beautiful Bill, some of its myriad provisions have received less attention than others. Among them are a flurry of changes to the way student borrowers repay loansboth future borrowers and current ones.
At the moment, borrowers have the ability to pause student-loan payments if they lose their job or earn less than the minimum wage. The passage of the tax bill, however, completely eliminates those unemployment and economic hardship deferment options for students taking out federal loans after July 2027. Rather than encourage more responsible borrowing, this move seems likely to result in far more defaulting on loans.
The biggest change from the tax bill for student borrowers, however, is that the existing slate of at least six repayment plans will be streamlined into just two options as of next summer. Trumps bill terminates current plans such as the Income-Contingent Repayment plan, PAYE plan, and Bidens much-challenged SAVE plan (more on that one momentarily) in favor of either a fixed repayment option or the income-fueled Repayment Assistance Program, which allows borrowers to apply part of their monthly income to loan repayment for up to 30 years. Student borrowers using any current plans have until July 2028 to pick one of the new ones.
Of those affected, though, current SAVE plan borrowers may have the most to sweat over.
Interest payments return soon for millions
When student loan payments resumed in August 2023, after a three-and-a-half-year pause, borrowers had to navigate making them against the rising cost of living and stagnant wages that drove economic panic throughout the 2024 election. No wonder only about half of the nearly 43 million borrowers who collectively owed $1.5 trillion in outstanding student loans as of January 2024 remained up to date on their payments.
Easing some of their burden, Bidens SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education plan, sought to make student loan payments more affordable by scaling them according to income and family sizeand in some cases erasing them altogether. Last July, though, amid multiple lawsuits alleging Biden lacked the authority to enact the SAVE plan, federal judges in two district courts put SAVE on ice while weighing the legal merit of those suits. As a result, borrowers enrolled in SAVE fell into administrative forbearance, with a pause on monthly payments and interest accrual. But back in February, an appeals court sided with the lawsuits, sending the SAVE plan into further legal limbo. Now the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes text that eliminates the SAVE plan entirely starting next year.
Within days of the tax bills passage, the Department of Education deemed the Biden administrations deployment of the SAVE plan illegal and announced that loan payments and interest fees for 8 million student loan borrowers would resume on August 1.
It was the last major announcement from the department before SCOTUS ruled on Monday that the president could continue gutting it, further obscuring the path ahead for borrowers.
More administrative chaos on the way
Not only was shutting down the Department of Education one of the objectives listed in Project 2025, its been a goal of the conservative movemnt since at least 1980, when then-candidate Ronald Reagan campaigned for president in part on a promise to abolish the then-newly opened department. (Since Democrats controlled congress at the time, they later blocked the Reagan administrations efforts to abolish it.)
Now that this mission to leave education up to individual states is on the verge of total success, the process for repaying loans is potentially headed for total chaos. Trump previously announced plans to move management of the entire $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio from the Department of Education to the Small Business Administration, but conducting a migration of that magnitude without an airtight strategy in place will almost certainly lead to untold disruption in services.
“It takes resources to manage that asset, including trained staff to make sure borrowers have good information and colleges can administer loan programs properly,” Peter Granville, a higher education finance expert, told CBS News back in March, when Trump began dismantling the department. “It takes technical expertise that only Education Department officials have.”
The sloppy rollout of cuts by Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency this year does not exactly instill confidence that this administration will implement any changes to loan servicing systems with care and finesse. Indeed, when the administration initially laid off half the staff from the Department of Education in Marcha move officially allowed by this weeks SCOTUS rulingan hours-long outage at StudentAid.gov followed the next day, along with other FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) outages. Who knows how much further deterioration will ensue when even more institutional knowledge is lost?
The legality of the plan to shut down the Department of Education will almost certainly face other challenges in the months and years ahead, leaving borrowers exposed to potential back-and-forth shifts that could cause billing confusion, lost payment data, or worse. One things for sure, though: Whatever Biden-era student borrowers have learned while in college, when the bill comes due, they may never know exactly how much they owe and to whom they owe it.
The workplace in 2025 is evolving faster than ever, thanks to bold shifts in culture, technology, and employee expectations. From asynchronous work models that prioritize output over presence to the rise of artificial intelligence agents and freelance leadership, companies are rethinking traditional norms in real time. Below, discover 10 of the most surprising trends reshaping how we work, along with expert advice on how to manage them. The insights paint a clear picture: adaptability, trust, and human-centered innovation are the new cornerstones of business success.
Asynchronous Work Prioritizes Outcomes Over Presence
In 2025, the most future-ready companies aren’t asking, Where are you working from? They’re asking, What did you move forward today? We’re prioritizing outcomes over outputs, and replacing outdated office culture with systems that reward clarity, creativity, efficiency, and speed.
We’re an asynchronous-first organization. That means fewer meetings and more momentum. We don’t gather on Zoom to prove we’re working; we create Loom videos, build shared documentation, and give people the time and space to create in a manner that works best for them. The result is sharper thinking and stronger ownership.
We’re also an AI-native company, so AI is a partner in our work, not a threat. Our teams use it to write, synthesize, and research, freeing up time and brainpower for strategy and storytelling. AI takes care of the repetition while we keep the strategy and relationships.
And while some leaders are doubling down on rigid return-to-office (RTO) mandates, we’ve doubled down on trust. We don’t monitor keystrokes. We don’t care if someone is building a pitch deck in a café in London or reviewing press targets from their lake house in Wisconsin. What matters is the work product and how it’s driving outcomes for our clients.
The companies clinging to control are losing talent and time. If your team still measures productivity by hours online or office attendance, you’re not just behind, you’re building a business for a workforce that no longer exists.
Sarah Schmidt, President of PR and Strategic Communications, Interdependence
Meritocracy Resurges in Workplace Compensation Strategies
So far this year, as we’ve seen divestment in diversity, equity, and inclusion programs driven by shifts in federal expectations, another trend has emerged in the workplace: a renewed focus on meritocracy. This has been especially visible at companies like Amazon and Google, which both recently adjusted their compensation and performance strategies to provide outsized rewards to top performers.
Generally, I’m aligned with this trend when it’s implemented carefully. High performers often drive significant value for the business, and their contributions should be reflected meaningfully in their rewards. However, our more average performers still support the company in many valuable and exceptional ways. As we think through similar changes, we need to be mindful of how they impact this group, ensuring that they feel motivated and inspired to do better, and not disregarded or underappreciated.
With respect to paying high performers, I often advocate for creating additional budgets rather than reallocating funds, which can feel penalizing to average performers. Both groups are necessary for business success and should be recognized accordingly. I also advise revisiting the use of restrictive performance distributions. When too few people can be rated highly, it creates environments where peers may feel forced to compete rather than collaborate. Instead, expanding room for more high ratings, while still maintaining guardrails and very clear definitions, enables leaders to recognize talent more equitably without fostering scarcity or resentment.
Finally, as we evolve our approach to rewarding top performers, we need to consider how these changes impact our broader pay policies across base salary, bonus, and equity. We may need to rethink and adjust our programs and frameworks to ensure they are equitable, sustainable, and aligned with our long-term business goals and overall strategy.
Overall, I support the shift toward rewarding impact. However, I also believe we must balance that with care for our steady, solid performers. My advice is to make expectations clear and attainable, offer support and growth opportunities, and ensure people feel valued even if they’re not always at the top.
Tyren Thompson, Total Rewards Manager, Zoom
Companies Shift Focus from Employees to Technology
One trend I’ve observed in 2025 is that many organizations appear to be shifting away from being people- and employee-centric to being more leader- and technology-centric.
For the better part of the decade, “employee experience” was a central idea. Defining your Employee Value Proposition and creating a culture where employees truly thrive was top of mind.
The “culture wars,” which hit a tipping point in 2020 (and again in 2024 with the election), coupled with the dehumanizing rhetoric from the current administration, created a situation where many companies either shifted or deprioritized certain “People & Culture” initiatives.
Add in the emergence and increased utilization of AI, and many companies are seemingly making AI central to their positioning and overarching value proposition. This has led to some uncertainty for employees, as well as some fear-mongering about AI taking jobs, all resulting in the increased deprioritization of the employee experience.
While it is necessary to consider how you’re leveraging and utilizing emerging technology, simply put, you can’t forget about your people. As long as any organization has employees, their experience should remain a priority. People want to work in organizations that align with their values, and feeling like you’re a “cog in the technology wheel” will ultimately lead to adverse consequences (e.g., retention issues, disengagement, etc.).
The companies that figure out how to prioritize the human/employee experience at work, while also keeping up with emerging technology, are the ones who will win.
Daniel Oppong, Founder & Lead Consultant, The Courage Collective
Women Leaders Embrace Freelance Opportunities
The rise in the freelance workforce was already accelerating, but the incredible pace of women pursuing independent work is a trend we should all pay close attention to. As women leaders continue to lose ground in corporate environments, they are finding agency and economic opportunity as solopreneurs. This trend poses an economic and reputation risk for brands that need the empathy and lived experiences of their customers and community represented across the business.
For leaders building strong, agile wokforces, it’s time to get creative to keep these critical voices in the workforce. One strategy to attract and retain these leaders is to think beyond the traditional employment model, instead building flexible, blended teams of employees and independents working in close collaboration. Shifting from a default full-time employee model to one where we distribute work to project-based teamsspun up more quickly and without the long-term commitmentallows workers the ability to contribute while maintaining schedule autonomy.
My advice for anyone considering building a blended team or entering into the independent workforce is to get very clear about scope. What is the job to be done? And what skills are needed to do it? Remove the old expectations of how to get there, because the innovation coming from AI and the independent workforce means women can meaningfully participate in our economy in new and exciting ways without the burnout of our post-pandemic era.
Brea Starmer, CEO and Founder, Lions & Tigers
Engaging Gen Z Through Personalized Career Growth
A recent trend we’ve noticed is younger employees who feel disconnected from work. Amid rising inflation and a weaker job market, the new generation wants to feel growth and stability. When these employees don’t, it affects their work and productivity.
Here’s how we prioritize job satisfaction to keep our younger employees happy and engaged:
1. We make Gen Zers part of their own growth plan development. Our job is providing a transparent career path and setting clear expectations. Their job is to proactively seize opportunities to grow on that path. We let them decide what their career growth looks like.
2. We don’t let the new workforce feel stuck. Our team leaders actively look for high-performing employees. We keep pace with their performance by giving new training, seminars, and collaborative projects.
3. Our mentorship program allows Gen Zers to work with senior individual contributors (ICs) and upskill or reskill with greater flexibility.
Working with Gen Z trends has not only made our employees happier, but it has also increased engagement by 46% and boosted our employee retention rates by 62%!
Himanshu Agarwal, Cofounder, Zenius.co
Embracing Employees’ Digital Footprints as Assets
Companies with a future-forward culture are openly embracing their dynamic team members’ “career portfolios” and digital footprints. Businesses that see the proliferation of technology and deployment of AI as the future view their team’s talent outside of work as a value-add rather than a brand liability.
This new wave of companies highlighting and reposting their staff’s achievements is reframing visibility as a shared asset, where individual thought leadership, podcast features, or side ventures become a signal of trust, not a threat. It is a shift from controlling the narrative to coauthoring it.
I see this trend of career portfolio diversification as a necessary response to digital platforms cementing online presence. This acceptance allows top performers to expand their reach while also remaining in their roles, ultimately preventing attrition at their current companies. I advise employees to create an online executive presence and to build a brand that puts their core values at the center of their messaging.
Olivia Dufour, Founder, Olivia Dufour Consulting
Intergenerational Mentoring Circles Bridge Skill Gaps
The uptick in intergenerational mentoring circles is one of my favorite emerging workplace trends for 2025. Several companies are revolutionizing mentoring by creating structured programs in which Gen Z employees teach digital skills to senior colleagues, while simultaneously learning institutional knowledge and strategic thinking from those same professionals.
It’s an important trend because it addresses two critical workplace challenges simultaneously: the digital skills gap among senior leaders and the institutional knowledge gap among younger employees. Intergenerational mentoring fosters more cohesive and adaptable teams while enhancing retention across all age groups. Major corporations like P&G, Citibank, General Electric, Fidelity, Cisco, and Target have all found success running reverse mentoring programs across different business areas as a competitive advantage tool, as well as to solve business challenges.
To bring this trend effectively to your organization, design programs that will emphasize mutual benefit rather than one-way knowledge transfer. Focus on creating psychological safety so that senior employees feel comfortable being “students,” and set clear learning objectives for both parties to ensure measurable outcomes. Establish success metrics, including skill assessments, engagement surveys, and project collaboration outcomes.
Amanda Fischer, CEO & Executive Career Coach, AMF Coaching & Consulting
Virtual Coworking Boosts Productivity in Remote Era
In the age of hybrid work and digital overload, a quiet trend is gaining momentum: cowork video companionship. Also known as virtual coworking, this practice pairs individuals via video calls to work silently alongside each other, often with brief check-ins and checkouts. Platforms like Focusmate have logged over 5 million sessions, with 93% of users reporting an improvement in productivity. As isolation, screen fatigue, and attention fragmentation continue to challenge remote teams, this low-pressure, high-focus format offers a surprisingly effective alternative to traditional collaboration.
My take? This trend isn’t just a productivity hackit’s a cultural shift. Cowork video companionship taps into something deeply human: the desire to be seen without needing to perform. It’s rooted in body doubling, a practice long used by people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to stay focused by working in the quiet presence of another person. The psychology is sound, and the use cases are expandingfrom freelancers and founders to students and solopreneurs. It provides presence without pressure and structure without surveillance, and it’s helping remote professionals find rhythm in a world of digital chaos.
For those considering this trend, my advice is simple: Start small, be consistent, and stay flexible. Try a few sessions on Focusmate or set up weekly cowork blocks with a colleague over Zoom. Observe how it impacts your focus, stress, and output. You don’t need to overhaul your workflowjust integrate the companionship where it counts. In a world where “togetherness” is increasingly virtual, body doubling might be the most human productivity tool we didn’t know we needed.
Analia Mendez, CEO and Founder, Signature Careers LLC
AI Agents Reshape Workfrce Dynamics and Roles
One of the most surprising workplace trends in 2025 (at least to me) is the emergence of agentic AInot as a distant concept but as a real, operational shift in how work gets done. This is not about passive tools or helpful copilots anymore. These AI agents are now handling everything from scheduling meetings and onboarding to approving expense reports and drafting documentsall done autonomously.
When late last year Salesforce cofounder and CEO Marc Benioff said, “We are really at the edge of a revolutionary transformation” when it comes to using digital labor, most of us couldn’t even tell what digital labor is. And yet just last month, Salesforce’s research on chief human resources officers’ views on agentic AI revealed that 80 percent think that “within five years, most workforces will have humans and AI agents or digital labor working together.”
Many companies have moved past the experimenting stage. Leaders at Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, and other businesses are already reframing roles with this in mind. Even their messaging is clear in that direction: In the near future, every employee will manage a portfolio of AI agents, essentially becoming a team leader of digital collaborators.
This is not just a tech upgrade. It’s a mindset shift. Managing people and managing agents require very different skills. We’re moving fast from delegating tasks to defining logic, setting thresholds for autonomy, and teaching AI when to handle something itself and when to raise its hand and say, I think you’d better take this one. It’s both exciting and unsettling, especially for roles built on execution rather than strategy.
My advice for individuals and organizations is to adapt. And fast! You’d need to start small and pilot an agent in a real workflow. Learn how to supervise, audit, and co-create with these systems. Focus not only on productivity gains but also on the redesign of human roles around this new digital workforce. This also means developing new skills, such as prompt strategy, process design, digital judgment, and the ability to set boundaries that tell AI when to act and when to step aside (that is, critical thinking). Everyone is concerned about AI. What most don’t realize is that the real differentiator isn’t whether you use AI, but whether you know how to lead it.
Maria Papacosta, Cofounder, MSC Marketing Bureau
Power Skills Replace Soft Skills in Business
The most surprising workplace trend hitting us in 2025? Companies are finally ditching the term “soft skills” and recognizing what I call “power skills”the strategic capabilities that actually drive business results.
I’m seeing job descriptions that list “conflict resolution” and “emotional regulation” right alongside technical requirements. Not as nice-to-haves, but as core competencies with measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) attached.
Here’s why this matters: We’ve spent decades treating communication, empathy, and strategic thinking like personality traits instead of learnable, scalable business skills. Meanwhile, companies hemorrhaged talent and missed revenue targets because their “high performers” couldn’t collaborate, give feedback, or adapt under pressure.
The shift happened when organizations started connecting the dots between people skills and profit margins. It turns out that managers who create psychological safety aren’t just “nice”their teams deliver 67% more breakthrough innovations. Leaders who can navigate difficult conversations don’t just keep peacethey prevent the costly dysfunction that kills productivity.
My advice for leaders jumping on this trend:
1. Stop outsourcing people development to HR. If you’re a director expecting someone else to teach your team how to give difficult feedback or manage up effectively, you’re missing the strategic advantage. These skills directly impact your bottom line.
2. Get specific about measurement. “Better communication” isn’t a goal “reduce project revision cycles by 30% through clearer stakeholder alignment” is. Track the business impact, not just the feel-good metrics.
3. Invest like you mean it. Companies that drop $50K on new software but balk at $5K for conflict resolution training are making backward investments. Your people problems are costing you more than your tech problems.
The organizations winning this transition are treating power skills like any other competitive advantagesomething you develop systematically, measure relentlessly, and leverage strategically.
Because here’s the truth: In a world where AI can handle the technical work, your humans’ ability to think, connect, and adapt isn’t just importantit’s your only sustainable differentiator.
Dana Mahina, Founder, CEO, & Transformational Leader, Dana Mahina
A 1.6 million square foot, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
That is how architect Frank Mahan, from the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, described the Waldorf Astoria’s near $2-billion renovation project on a recent behind-the-scenes tour. “If you were here a few months ago, or a year ago, you would see workers undertaking restoration in these spaces that we’re walking through with a fine point paintbrush.”
When the Waldorf Astoria opened over a century ago, the hotel became so synonymous with high society gatherings that one of its corridorswhere the elite came to show off their finest attirewas known as Peacock Alley.” The hotel quickly became a symbol of New York’s glamour, ambition, and what the author Henry James called the hotel spirita place where everyone was equal as long as they could pay the price of entry.
[Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
When I visited in late April, the ambition was evident in the constellation of workers buzzing around the premises. Some were tearing plastic wrap from freshly delivered armchairs. Others were busying around Cole Porter’s grand piano, which was tauntingly shrouded under a protective cloak. But if the renovation was one giant puzzle, then these were the last pieces.
This week, after much delay, the reimagined Art Deco landmark has finally reopened. It is as spectacular as New Yorkers deserve it to be.
Peacock Alley [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
Midtowns belle of the ball
Spanning an entire block in Midtown Manhattan, the Waldorf Astoria was the tallest and largest hotel in the world when it opened in 1931, to a design by Schultze & Weaver. Quickly, the Art Deco landmark, which hosted presidents, royalty, celebrities, and major global events, became synonymous with power and cultural cachet.
Over the years, however, the celebrated building underwent a patchwork of renovations that gradually chipped away at its character. The lobby was reconfigured, cooling towers were added to the roof, and by 2017, when the entire hotel closed, just one of the original 5,400 windows remained.
Basildon Room [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
Eight years later, the Waldorf Astoria has undergone a wildly complex transformation that converted some hotel rooms into opulent residences designed by top-tier designers, and restored every inch of the place, including signature venues like the Grand Ballroom and Peacock Alley. The project was slowed down by the fact that 60,000 square feet of the building were designated as a landmark. (This makes the Waldorf Astoria the fourth largest interior landmark in New York City.)
Some parts of the building were meticulously restored to reflect the building’s original 1931 design; others were modernized to meet 21st-century standards. “It’s an awesome responsibility because in a sense, [the building is] owned by New Yorkers, but you can’t be afraid,” Mahan told me. “You have to allow change in order for it to have a new life.”
Silver Corridor [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
Instead of freezing the building in time, or even gutting its identity, the Waldorf has merged old and new. At a time when countless other historic buildings are being converted into private condos, or getting demolished altogether, its rebirth offers a blueprint for how landmark preservation can coexist with new investment. Eight years after the hotel closed, the myth of the Waldorf Astoria lives on.
Residenial Lobby [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
The most iconic address
The most anticipated change has been the Waldorf Astoria residences. These high-end apartments generated up-front sales revenue, which helped finance the hotel’s renovation. Before it closed, the hotel counted 1,400 guest rooms. Now, that number has been reduced to 375 rooms operated by Hiltonand 375 residential units designed by French interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot. Today, for the first time ever, those with enough disposable income can own an apartment at The Waldorf and call one of the worlds most iconic addresses their home.
[Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
The residential wing comes with a separate entrance, a private porte cochre, and the sort of detail youd expect from a luxury enclave carved out of a hotel this storiedlike a cleverly disguised concierge closet that can be accessed both from the apartment and the corridor, allowing staff to deliver packages, laundry, or room service without setting foot inside. Studios start at $1.875 million and four bedrooms begin at $18.75 million. (At the time of writing, 25 residences have already closed, and many residents have moved in, including the managing director of Waldorf Astoria New York, Luigi Romaniello; two penthouses, housed in the copper-clad towers, are yet to be unveiled.)
[Photo: Colin Miller/courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
The residences are spectacular, but the real gift is the public-facing side of the hotel. Average New Yorkers can now walk up the steps of the Park Avenue Lobby, take in the grandeur of the interiors while shortcutting through the building, and exit onto Lexington without spending a single penny. This journey was possible before the hotel closed, but todayat long lastit looks like it was always meant to.
[Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
Going back to 1931
To return the Waldorf to its former glory, SOM consulted archival black-and-white photographs, specification books, and original drawings from the Schultze & Weaver collection at the WolfsonianFIU museum in Florida.
On the outside, the team restored the buildings bronze entryways and distinct brickwork, and replaced every windowexpanding 900 of them to let in more daylight. They removed the cooling towers to reveal a skylight that once crowned the Starlight Ballroom, where Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra once dazzled captivated audiences. That space has now been reimagined as a 25-meter indoor swimming pooldubbed the Starlight Poolbathed in natural light.
[Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
Inside, they worked with French designer Pierre-Yves Rochon to make the Waldorf look both old and new again. In the Park Avenue lobby, they stripped back the ceiling, updated the underlying lighting infrastructure, and rebuilt it to match an old design they had seen in an archival photograph. It was a black and white photograph, but Mahans team still noticed that the ceiling reflected light in an unusual way. Pairing that with notes from the spec book, they discovered the central marble panel had once been backlit.
“That was the case with many of the spaces,” he says. “People had been walking through them and thinking, ‘oh, thats a historic hotel, this is the way it’s always been,’ but in fact, it changed many times,” he says. Now, the new lobby looks brighterand closer to the original architects intent.
In the check-in lobby, the iconic Waldorf Astoria clock that once served as a meeting point for New Yorkers, was disassembled, cleaned, re-gilded, and re-silvered. In the Silver Gallery upstairs, art conservation firm ArtCare painstakingly restored a series of murals depicting the 12 months and four seasons. In photos Mahan shows me, the murals look muddied by time. The restored versions you can see today appear to be glowing with light.
[Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York]
In the check-in lobby, the architects reduced the number of reception desks from a seemingly endless row of desks that Mahan says made it look like a train station, to just two. And in the Grand Ballroom, where the Beatles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, they relined the walls with genuine silver leaf and acoustically isolated the entire space. In the past, theyve either had to keep the volume down or not rent out the rooms around the ballroom because the vibrations would bother people in the surrounding rooms, says Mahan. Now, this space basically floats in the center of the building.
Perhaps most impressively, SOM reinstated the original volume and drama of the buildings public passagewaythe one that allows you to traverse the block from Park Avenue to Lexington. In 1931, Schultze & Weaver designed the corridor as a cinematic journey through five distinct but connected lobbies that widened and narrowed to create moments of compression and release. That would’ve added to the drama of the space, says Mahan. By 2017, some lobbies had become cluttered with retail build-outs and clashing materials. Now, it flows like the choreographed experience it once was.
The building has survived COVID-19 delays, supply chain issues, and even a corruption scandalonly to reopen at a troubled time for the tourism industry. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the U.S. is on track to lose $12.5 billion in travel revenue this year, which makes it the only country out of 184 analyzed thats projected to see tourism dollars decline in 2025.
If all else fails (it likely wont considering the target clientele) New Yorkers will at least have that glorious shortcut.
Traditional brain scans only show part of the picture. They cant fully capture how different regions of the brain communicatean essential factor in detecting neurological diseases early. Dr. Rahul Biswas, a neurologist at the University of CaliforniaSan Francisco, is working to change that with AI-powered tools that map these hidden neural connections.
His groundbreaking research reveals how Alzheimers disrupts brain communication in unexpected areas, challenging long-held assumptions about the disease. Now, through his company, Kaneva Consulting, Dr. Biswas is focused on transforming this science into practical diagnostic tools that can identify brain disorders long before symptoms emerge.
Fast Company spoke with Biswas about how AI is revolutionizing brain health, from early disease detection to personalized treatments and everyday tech. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How are AI models revealing new insights about the brain that weren’t possible with traditional neuroscience methods?
AI is giving us a radically clearer view of how the brain worksnot just where activity happens, but how regions interact, influence each other, and change over time. Traditional neuroscience often studied brain areas in isolation. But AI can analyze massive, complex data setslike full-brain recordings or scansand uncover subtle patterns across the whole system. For instance, it can detect a network of regions that consistently cooperate during memory formation, which might be overlooked in conventional analysis. In short, AI helps us move from snapshots to systems-level understanding, revealing hidden relationships and early warning signs of dysfunction.
What are some of the most promising current applications of AI in brain health, like early detection of neurodegenerative diseases or personalized treatment strategies?
One exciting use of AI is early detection of brain disorders. AI can sift through brain scans or even routine health records to spot subtle signs of disease long before symptoms show. For example, a machine learning system detected Alzheimers with over 90% accuracy on MRI scans, years earlier than traditional diagnosis. Catching such changes early means doctors can intervene sooner.
Another promising area is personalized treatment. AI can help tailor therapy to each individuals brain. By analyzing a persons unique neural and genetic data, an algorithm might predict which depression medication will work best for them, reducing the usual trial-and-error in finding effective treatment.
How would this brain monitoring work in practice for patients?
Let’s take, for example, the brain network modeling approach. As part of their visit, a patient has an fMRI scan. And you directly feed it into the algorithm and get the network model. The beauty of this is you’re getting the brain network of the patient himself directly from his data. So you can see how the brain network is changing at every visit.
Its personalized for that one patient. And over time you can really observe how the different network connections are changing. Are they getting closer to signatures of Alzheimer’s or other neurological diseases? Or are they doing fine? And if they are at the scale of any disease scenario it will be flagged.
So just like if we take a blood test every visit and if the level of some parameter of the blood goes off the chart, you’ll see like a red mark out there saying “Hey, this is above the normal zone.” So something just like that can happen for brain networks, because networks are considered so good biomarkers for disease prediction.
How might AI-driven predictive analytics and wearable technologies change the way we monitor and maintain brain health in daily life?
AI plus wearable tech will make brain health monitoring continuous and proactive. Our smartphones and smartwatches already track sleep, heart rate, and movement. By adding AI analysis, these devices could also watch for subtle changes that signal cognitive decline or mental health issues. For example, an app might notice your typing speed has slowed or your sleep patterns have shifted and flag this as a possible early warning. Essentially, brain health checks would become a seamless part of daily lifea bit like a check engine light for your braininstead of something that only happens at the doctors office.
How does your approach differ from traditional brain network analysis?
Naive methods will say that, hey, two brain regions are correlated and so consider that as a connection. But perhaps those two brain regions were affected by a single parent brain region. A single brain region C was affecting both A and B together. So it just appeared that A and B are connected, but it was like a spurious connection. So causal methods try to be more specific. And they really try to say, “hey, brain regions A and B were not connected. It was brain region C which was directing influence on A and B at the same time.”
You’re creating causal network models of the brain. What surprising discoveries has this approach uncovered about how information flows through neural circuits?
By using causal models (which show who influences whom in the brain), we discovered some unexpected things about how signals move. In Alzheimers disease, for example, we saw a widespread communication breakdown across multiple regionsnot just the memory centers people expect. Connections through parts of the frontal and temporal lobes, and even the cerebellum, were significantly weaker in Alzheimers patients. This was surprising, since the cerebellum isnt typically linked to Alzheimers, and it suggests the disease disrupts broader networks than we realized. We also noticed the brain attempting to reroute signals when a main pathway weakened, hinting at a built-in resilience where secondary pathways try to pick up the slack.
What are the practical implications of these discoveries now or in the near future?
These findings have clear practical implications. Better diagnostics could be one: if we know a certain network typically weakens early in Alzheimers, doctors might use that as a biomarker. A brain scan could check the strength of that network in a person with mild symptoms to help diagnose or even predict the condition sooner. Another implication is targeted therapy. By pinpointing which brain hubs or pathways are breaking down, treatments can focus therefor example, a targeted brain stimulation or a cognitive exercise to strengthen a specific circuit. In short, understanding these causal networks lets us start addressing the root network disruptions, not just the surface symptoms.
You’ve applied your brain network analysis to Alzheimer’s disease. What potential clinical impacts do you envision from this work in the next three to five years?
In the next three to five years, I anticipate a few important clinical impacts:
Brain network markers could be used to spot Alzheimers much sooner. An AI-analyzed scan might catch the diseases signature network disruption years before noticeable symptoms, enabling early intervention.
Doctors may also monitor patients brain connectivity over time as a new vital sign. If a treatment is working, we would see the patients network decline slow or stabilize. That feedback could help adjust therapies promptly.
Finally, theapies might be tailored to a persons specific network weaknesses. For example, if someones frontal network is most affected, doctors could focus medication or cognitive exercises on strengthening that regions function. This network-guided approach means more individualized and potentially effective care.
Beyond medicine, how might your research on causal brain networks impact everyday technology we use?
What we learn about the brains networks can directly inspire smarter everyday technology. One example is in AI software: by observing how patterns of influence between brain regions shift across different mental statessomething our causal network models help revealdevelopers can draw inspiration for digital assistants that better adapt to changing contexts or tasks, much like the brain does. Another area is brain-computer interfacestechnology that lets users control devices through neural signals. By understanding how brain regions causally influence one another during specific tasksinsights from our causal network modelsengineers can design more responsive interfaces that align with the brains natural information flow. In short, studying brain networks offers tech designers a blueprint for creating more brain-like, efficient, and user-friendly systems.
What common misconceptions do people have about how the brain actually processes information, and how does your research address these?
Many people think the brain works like a simple computer. Input goes in, processing happens in one place, and output comes out. But in reality, the brain is a dynamic web of interconnected regions constantly influencing one another. Our research shows that even a simple decision can involve multiple regions in complex causal chains. Its not about one brain area doing one thingit’s about networks adapting, rerouting, and interacting in context-dependent ways.
How is AI enabling new kinds of scientific questions and research approaches in neuroscience that were previously impossible or impractical?
With traditional tools, we were limited to studying local effectslike how one brain region responds to a stimulus. But AI lets us ask broader, system-level questions: How do signals propagate across the brain over time? How do networks reorganize in disease or under stress? These were hard to test before because of the data complexity, but now with AI, especially causal modeling and large-scale computation, we can track and test those dynamics with precision.
If you could advise healthcare leaders or policymakers on one priority for ensuring AI delivers on its promise for brain health, what would it be?
Build a strong foundation of data and validation. This means encouraging secure sharing of high-quality brain health data across institutions, so AI models can be trained on diverse, representative information. It also means requiring rigorous testing of AI toolslike clinical trials for algorithmsbefore theyre deployed in clinics. With richer data and strict validation, we can ensure that AI actually delivers safe, effective improvements in brain health, rather than just hype.
Spotted lanternflies have been making headlines since they were first sighted in the U.S. over a decade ago. The colorful, invasive bugs are a double whammy for fruit trees and other key crops, feeding on sap and leaving sugary excrement that attracts dangerous pathogens and fungi. But the costly insects may have met their match with an unlikely rival: your dog.
Dogs have long been professionally trained to help detect invasive species for conservation efforts. What sets a new study, published July 16 in the journal PeerJ Life & Environment, apart is that these are not professionally trained dogs. They are the canine equivalent of citizen scientists, and they were still able to effectively find spotted lanternfly eggs.
It was a proof-of-concept study to ask the question: Can we have citizen scientists and their very cool, everyday companion doggos go out and support the effort of conservation work in their home areas? says lead study author Sally Dickinson, an applied animal behaviorist and search-and-rescue dog handler. Its enrichment for their dogs and enrichment for the people as well.
Few dogs are trained professionally for conservation efforts, so having everyday companion animals help out makes it a more scalable solution for managing invasive speciesand many owners were excited to take part. A post about the study on social media was shared about a million times, Dickinson says, and researchers were able to create 182 dog-and-handler teams across the country. Some of them were retired working dogs, but many were everyday canines that like to sniff things out for fun.
Anytime you can stimulate your dog, its good for them, Bill Wellborn, one of the study participants, said in a statement. Pepe [his Tibetan terrier] obviously enjoys it. And its a way we can take dog skills and training to help our community.
The research team gave handlers a sample of spotted lanternflies odor so that they could train their dogs to recognize it. Then, when the teams were ready, they put their odor recognition skills to the test in two evaluations.
Indoors, the dogs were able to find the spotted lanternflies eggs 82% of the time, and in the field, 58% of the time. Since the insects lay their eggs in easily overlooked locationsthe undersides of lumber and tree bark crevices, for exampledogs make much more efficient searchers than humans.
The canines’ strong performance was not contingent on breed, Dickinson says. Dogs and handlers that have a great relationship, and are able to work as a team, were the ones that did very well in evaluations. Beyond protecting local plants and agricultural crops, the activity can be rewarding and fun for both dogs and humans as they get outside and get to work.
There are obviously hundreds of other ways that you could volunteer to protect your local environment, but this is one way that you could do it with your dog, Dickinson says. How cool is that? Go to a winery, work your dog, and have a great day. I mean, it sounds like the perfect life to me.
Since the Trump administration first took office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has followed a similar formula for most of its posts on X, which are typically celebrating mass deportations, using dehumanizing language like criminal illegal aliens, and defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Recently, though, the account has taken a detour to post a different genre of content: aspirational pro-America artwork.
On July 1, the DHS posted an image of a painting by the late Thomas Kinkade titled Morning Pledge, which shows a suburban neighborhood with a church and an American flag. Above it, the DHSs caption reads: Protect the Homeland.
Then, on July 14, the DHS followed up with a piece by contemporary artist Morgan Weistling that depicted a family of early settlers in the American West. The painting, which shows two parents holding a newborn baby inside a covered wagon, is captioned: Remember your Homelands Heritage. New Life in a New Land Morgan Weistling.
[Screenshot: DHS/X.com]
Following the post, Weistling clarified that the DHS used his painting without permission, and that it invented an entirely new title for his work. But beyond ethical concerns about permission and copyright, the DHSs recent posts raise more pressing questions about what kind of America represents the organization’s concept of an ideal place to liveand who is included in that vision.
Taken without permission
After the DHS posted an image of his work, Weistling took to his official website, as well as to Facebook and Instagram, to set the record straight. (The Facebook and Instagram messages have since been deleted.)
[Screenshot: Morgan Weistling/Facebook]
So I was having a nice little vacation with my family when I get a message from a friend that the Department of Homeland Security has posted a painting of mine and its going viral, Weistling wrote on his Facebook page. As of this writing, the DHSs post has 19.1 million views and 34,000 likes. In a separate message on his website, Weistling added: They used a painting I did 5 years ago and re-titled it and posted it without my permission. It is a violation of my copyright on the painting. It was a surprise to me and I am trying to gather how this happened and what to do next.
[Screenshot: morganweistling.com]
According to Weistlings website, the painting used by the DHS is actually titled A Prayer for a New Liferather than the DHSs altered version of New Life in a New Land. This updated title, alongside the caption Remember your Homelands Heritage, places outsized emphasis on the land itself. Taken together with the paintings scene, the post seems to be skirting just around the edge of endorsing manifest destiny, or the assumption of American settlers inherent right to land in the West.
Weistling did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for a comment.
A Manifest Destiny aesthetic
Since the Trump administration took office in January, the DHS’s X account has become an active forum for the agency to promote President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
In early July alone, the DHS has already posted several images callously shrugging off the human suffering caused by the president’s deportation policies, which, most recently, include a new detention center for migrants built in the Florida Everglades. One repost from the White Houses official account shows a cup of coffee with the phrase Fire up the deportation planes added atop the liquid. Another image shows a border patrol vehicle in the desert, facing a distant sunset. The caption in neon green and white boasts: ZERO Releases in June. Lowest Month of Illegal Alien Encounters EVER.
And a third, in a near-parody of this administrations extreme stance on immigration, shows a mock poster of the film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial with the text: Even E.T. knew when it was time to GO HOME. Take control of your departure using the CBP Home App. Between these posts are countless images of Black and brown people arrested by ICE for alleged crimes.
The pivot to posting Kinkade’s and Weistlings works might be tonally jarring, but it’s indicative of the broader message the DHS account is trying to send. Weistlings body of work is almost entirely concerned with early American settlerspresenting an uncomplicated view of Americas origins, with scenes featuring a family happily riding west in a stagecoach or a rancher diligently tending his herd. Its a perspective that does not appear to include reference to Indigenous people.
Meanwhile, Kinkade, who became notable for commercializing his work in the 80s and 90s, catered specifically to a Christian middle-class audience (a community that he was later criticized for allegedly exploiting). An entire section of his studios website is dedicated to Patriotic Art, the bulk of which highlights iconography like the American flag, the Statue of Liberty, and in one instance, Captain America. In Kinkades 2012 obituary in New York magazine, author Jerry Saltz wrote that the artist represented the epitome of sentimental, illustrational, conservative art.
Both Weistling and Kinkade present an idyllic (and notably Eurocentric) portrayal of American societyone that, perhaps, evokes a fictional past thats implied by the phrase Make America Great Again. When the DHS urges its followers to Protect the Homeland, the question becomes: protect it for whom?
