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The past few years in corporate social impact have felt like a bull market. After 2020, companies raced to make commitments on racial justice, climate, mental health, and equity. Budgets grew. New executives were hired. Purpose became central to investor pitches and employee branding. Optimism and momentum were everywhere. But anyone who follows the stock market knows what comes after a bull run: a correction. A correction isnt a crash. Its a recalibration. It trims excess, exposes weak bets, and rewards investments with real fundamentals. Thats exactly what were seeing now in social impact. WHAT A CORRECTION LOOKS LIKE In the markets, corrections show up as a pullback in prices, a cool-down in exuberant storytelling, and a flight to safer assets. In corporate impact, its showing up as: Language shifts. Mentions of DEI in big-company filings have dropped by more than half in the past two years. Some firms now use belonging, workplace equity, or human capital risk instead. That doesnt always mean the work is goneit means leaders are trying to reduce political exposure. Reframed commitments. Pride sponsorships that once filled headlines have been scaled back or rebranded. ESG language is under attack in some states, so companies are re-packaging climate and governance work as risk management or resilience. Risk repricing. Target became a flashpoint, losing billions in market value and facing shareholder lawsuits after boycotts tied to Pride merchandise. Other companies have quietly moved dollars from visible campaigns into employee well-being or supplier diversity, where the value is clearer and the risk of backlash is lower. This is correction behavior: The froth is gone, the fundamentals remain. CORRECTIONS SEPARATE SPECULATION FROM STRATEGY Corrections dont create fragilitythey reveal it. Companies that treated DEI and social impact like a press releasebig promises, little infrastructureare retreating. Their programs were like hype stocks: attractive in the short term, weak in the long term. By contrast, companies that integrated equity, climate, or community engagement into their business modelinto talent strategy, supply chains, product development, and governanceare holding steady. Their investments look less flashy but more durable. ITS NOT JUST DEI This recalibration is happening across the whole portfolio of social justice work. Climate. ESG proposals in shareholder meetings are drawing record-low support in the U.S., even as global pressure rises. Still, most major corporations arent abandoning climate targetstheyre rebranding them as cost-saving, efficiency, or resilience plays. Philanthropy. Equity-centered giving surged after 2020. Now, some companies are consolidating efforts, focusing less on broad social-justice branding and more on specific, measurable partnerships with nonprofits. LGBTQ+ and racial justice. Campaigns that were once front-page news have pulled back. Yet behind the scenes, many companies continue funding ERGs, mental health benefits, and advocacy groupsjust without the same spotlight. This doesnt mean the social impact market has collapsed. It means the valuation of certain programs is being recalibrated. LESSONS FOR LEADERS So what should social impact leaders do in this correction phase? The stock market offers a useful playbook. 1. Re-underwrite your thesis. Investors revisit why they hold a stock. Leaders should revisit why theyve made social impact commitments. Where exactly does the work drive valuetalent retention, customer trust, market entry, regulatory preparedness? If you cant answer that, the program is vulnerable. 2. Strengthen governance. In finance, the highest-quality companies survive corrections through transparency and oversight. In social impact, that means elevating board or C-suite accountability, setting measurable KPIs, and showing how work ladders into business strategy. 3. Hedge political risk, not the mission. Smart investors dont abandon strong companies just because of volatilitythey hedge. The same applies here: Adjust language, broaden framing, emphasize universal benefits, but dont walk away from core commitments. 4. Rotate from optics to operating leverage. In a correction, investors leave speculative plays and focus on real earnings. Leaders should move resources from symbolic gestures to work that drives performance: fair hiring linked to skills needs, climate policies tied to supply chain efficiency, inclusive product design that reduces recalls and expands markets. 5. Stay invested through the cycle. History shows portfolios that hold through corrections outperform those that panic-sell. For companies, retreating now may ease short-term noise but risks long-term credibility with employees, customers, and communities. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CYCLE Corrections change the leadership board. The slogans and speculators exit. The companies with durable strategies compound. On the other side of this correction, the landscape will look different: Language will evolve. DEI may fade, but belonging, equity, and workplace culture will deepen. Climate and community will be treated as risk disciplines. Less about optics, more about resilience and compliance. Coalitions will professionalize. Nonprofits and movements will expect clearer value exchanges, not just sponsorship dollars. The fundamentalsequity, justice, sustainabilityarent going anywhere. Theyre being repriced, like strong companies in a correction. THE CALL TO LEADERS If you saw social impact as a nice-to-have, this moment will confirm the urge to cut. If you see it as a driver of talent, innovation, and resilience, this is your chance to professionalize, integrate, nd build for the long term. Corrections punish speculation. They reward discipline. Treat your social impact strategy like a long-term investment: Revisit the fundamentals, hedge against volatility, and keep building. The market will turn. The question is whether youll have something real to show when it does. Muneer Panjwani is CEO of Engage for Good.
Category:
E-Commerce
At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we enable high-level women to mentor each other to achieve personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organizations founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring. This month, I introduce to you Courtney Wright, CEO of Gemini Builds It, and author of Lady Boss Blueprint: How to Reframe Your Business to Create the Life of Your Dreams. Known for her candid, pragmatic style, she has scaled her company in one of the most complex and high-stakes industries: manufacturing. Courtney does not sugarcoat the leadership challenges. Instead, she embraces them, making the impossible look possible while building a culture of resilience. Q: People say you make it look easy. What is the truth behind that perception? Courtney Wright: Lets be realits not easy. Scaling a manufacturing company is messy, unpredictable, and often brutal. My job as CEO is not to hide the chaos, its to cut through it and get to the finish line. Weve built systems, habits, and a culture that make the hard things manageable. From the outside that might look like ease. But every single day there is grit. What people call easy is usually the result of preparation and years of small, intentional decisions stacked on top of each other. Q: How do you personally handle those grind moments? Wright: I roll up my sleeves. If a supply chain issue threatens a delivery or a client moves the goalposts, I am there with my team figuring it out. I dont believe in ivory tower leadership. I believe in visible leadership. When your team sees you shoulder to shoulder with them in the hardest moments, they are not just following instructions. They are bought into the mission. On a personal level, I remind myself that pressure is a privilege. If people are coming to you with complex problems, it means they trust you to solve them. That mindset helps me stay grounded even in the grind. Q: What is the biggest leadership lesson you have learned while scaling Gemini Builds It? Wright: Perfection is overrated. Consistency is what wins. Its tempting to chase flawless execution, but leadership is not about being flawless. Its about getting it done again and again, even under pressure. Resilience and repeatability matter more than polish. That is how you scale a business and how you build trust. People dont want perfect leaders. They want leaders who deliver. And you cannot do it alone. Early in my career, I thought I had to carry everything myself. Over time, I learned that empowering others is the only way you scale. Today, my team is filled with people who know how to own their lane, make decisions, and drive forward. Its about creating an environment where trust and accountability thrive. Q: How do you create resilience in your team? Wright: By modeling it. When things get tough, my job is not to pretend everything is fine. Its to show that we can face it and solve it together. We do not avoid the hard stuff, we tackle it. And when you practice that enough, resilience becomes part of your DNA. You stop fearing challenges and start expecting them. Thats when you know you have a strong team. We also talk openly about failure. Mistakes happen, but real failure is when you dont learn or get back up. That gives people permission to take smart risks. In manufacturing, there are always moving parts and tight deadlines. Resilient teams are decisive, adaptable, and unafraid of the bumps along the way. Q: Whats the secret to making hard things look easy in business? Wright: The secret is that its never easy. The real trick is to build the right culture, the right systems, and the right people. If you have those three things, the impossible becomes achievable. I have built my career on cutting through the noise and creating clarity. That is how we deliver. We tackle challenges until the solution feels obvious. When people know what is expected, where the finish line is, and why it matters, the path feels manageable. Thats what transforms chaos into momentum. And when clients see the finished product, they say, You made it look easy. The truth is, it was anything but easy. It was just intentional, disciplined work. Q: Beyond scaling Gemini Builds It, how do you see your role as a leader evolving? Wright: For me, leadership goes beyond these walls. Its about showing up in industries and rooms where women have traditionally been absent and proving that results speak louder than stereotypes. I make it a point to be visible because visibility matters. When people see someone who looks like them in a role they aspire to, it changes what they believe is possible. My focus now is not just on running Gemini at a high level but also on creating ripple effects for the next generation of leaders. If I can help even one person believe they belong at the head of the table, then the work is worth it. That is the legacy I want to leave behind. Larraine Segil is founder, chair, and CEO of the Exceptional Women Alliance.
Category:
E-Commerce
AI agents going rogue isnt just a theoretical scenario anymore. Recent incidents show AI agents making errors in a variety of situations, from legal problems and technical malfunctions, to actually deleting entire production databases. These incidents will not be one-offs; we can expect more AI agents to go awry. Security leaders need to be prepared to contain the damage when that happens. As AI agents move from pilot projects to production environments, we’re entering uncharted territory where traditional security frameworks fall short. The market is already responding to the risks: Gartner anticipates that at least 40% of agentic AI projects will be withdrawn by the end of 2027, with risk management concerns being a key reason. The root of the problem lies in how AI agents fail differently than anything we’ve secured before. Failure is not predictable Traditional systems fail in predictable ways. You have logs and structured rollbacks exist. Its a solved problem. But when AI agents fail, they dont just malfunction and stopthey act. And the blast radius can be significant. When an agent decides to, for example, clean up redundant data and target your production database, there’s no kill switch to stop it. Consider the downstream implications: An agent modifying CRM data near quarter-end could compromise earnings reporting. An agent updating the wrong customer records could trigger compliance violations. We have spent decades designing security systems around human behavior. However, AI agents operate on probabilistic models rather than deterministic logic, which means they may sometimes generate inaccuracies or fabricate information. When these fabrications lead to actions within production systems, they introduce an entirely new risk category. Compound failures The situation becomes exponentially worse when multiple agents interact. If each agent is correct 90% of the time, the error rate compounds quickly when working together. We’re not just dealing with individual agent failures; we’re looking at cascading failures across interconnected systems. We’re already seeing this in the wild with generative AI. A code editor maker had their chatbot hallucinate a login rule that was unpopular with customers, prompting outrage online and subscription cancellations. A global airline had to issue refunds to customers after its chatbot provided false information that invented a ticket refund policy. Industries at risk Some sectors face disproportionate risk. Healthcare organizations using AI agents that go awry could face life-threatening disruptions, when critical monitoring systems are damaged or lost. Financial services and government agencies are also high-stakes environments where agent errors could have far-reaching consequences. The business functions most vulnerable are those adopting agents fastest: sales, support, DevOps, and automation. These areas have repetitive tasks that make them ideal for agent deployment, but they also touch mission-critical applications and customer data where mistakes can have direct business impacts. Rethink security architecture AI agents represent a new category of risk that existing security playbooks don’t address. Here are five recommendations for building resilience into your AI strategy: Embrace “Secure by Design” for AI. Just as CISA’s Secure by Design framework transformed software development, we need explainability and reversibility built into AI systems from day one. Resilience cannot be an afterthought. Prepare for recovery. Just as we “assume breach” in cybersecurity, we must “assume agent error” in AI deployments. When agents fail, visibility alone isn’t enough; you need the ability to understand what went wrong and reverse it quickly. Traditional logs won’t help you roll back an agent’s multisystem rampage through your infrastructure. Design for compound failures. When multiple agents interact, errors multiply exponentially. Using ballpark figures, if each agent is right 90% of the time, the combined error rate in multi-agent workflows could reach 30-40%. Build your AI architecture to isolate agent actions and prevent error propagation between systems. Treat agent permissions as privileged access. Overprovisioned agents represent the same risk as overprivileged users, but with superhuman speed and scale. Apply the same access control rigor to agents that you do to humans, especially for agents touching mission-critical applications or customer data. Build responsible AI with visibility. Based on our conversations with enterprises, fewer than 10% have any AI forensics capabilities in place. Most can’t answer basic questions like “What did the agent do?” or “Why did it take that action?” Implement full lifecycle visibility from source prompt to final impact, with auditability that goes beyond traditional logs to actual reversibility capabilities. The enterprises that survive the agent era will be those that plan for failure while pursuing innovation. The time to build that capability is now, before your next production outage comes with an AI agent saying it “panicked.” Arvind Nithrakashyap is CTO and cofounder of Rubrik.
Category:
E-Commerce
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