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The metallic fringe hanging down from the edge of Anishnawbe Health Toronto’s community health center near downtown Toronto is the biggest indication that something different is happening here. Created to provide centralized health care and traditional healing to the 90,000-strong Indigenous population of Toronto, the clinic is the centerpiece of a unique city block of development that was intentionally led by the Indigenous community and designed to reflect its culture. [Photo: James Brittain/courtesy KGA] The wraparound fringe of more than 12,000 strands of stainless steel chainthe kind of aesthetic flourish easily targeted for elimination by the value engineers of a typical developmentis just one of many elements of the project that put its Indigenous roots on full display on this block. From its services and its building forms to the orientation of its landscaping, the development embodies Indigenous traditions, practices, and principles in a way that’s wholly uncommon in most urban environments. [Photo: Riley Snelling/courtesy KGA] Named the Indigenous Hub, this city block of development includes the aforementioned health center, along with an Indigenous job training center, two mid-rise residential towers, and public and private plazas. Indigenous iconography and material references can be seen across the site, from building facades that reference sacred blanket designs and healing rituals to wall treatments that evoke the bark of trees that once stood as forests on this site. It’s a project that goes to unusual lengths to put these elements on display. And it also required everyone involved in the project, from the developer to the architects and the landscape designers, to rethink their approach to urban development. [Photo: James Brittain/courtesy KGA] ‘A place of indigeneity’ Located in a part of the city that was once the floodplain of the Don River, and before that the ancestral lands and hunting grounds for Indigenous people for thousands of years, the site holds deep resonance for the community. The designers of the project, including an Indigenous architecture firm headquartered in a nearby First Nation, put great effort into drawing those connections in the look and feel of the project. “The intent was all about how do we ensure that when people are in this block, they understand that it is a place of indigeneity, and also understand where they are within the city,” says Matthew Hickey, a partner at Two Row Architect, an Indigenous architecture firm that advised on the design of every part of the project. [Photo: James Brittain/courtesy KGA] Working closely with Stantec Architecture, Two Row helped create the plan for the block, and then worked alongside Stantec and the architecture firm BDP Quadrangle to guide the design of the buildings and outdoor spaces within the block, including building facades inspired by traditional dress, traditional healing spaces that connect directly to the earth, and a central Indigenous Peoples Garden plaza where medicinal plants are grown. This ambitious, Indigenous-led development has been decades in the making. The charity health care organization Anishnawbe Health Toronto (AHT) had been searching for a place to consolidate and improve services it had been providing to Toronto’s Indigenous population since the 1980s. Then in the late 2000s, when officials in Toronto put in a bid to host the 2015 Pan Am Games, this former floodplain was targeted as a potential site for redevelopment. As part of the plan, and in line with Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, a two-and-a-half acre section of the redevelopment area was set aside for Indigenous uses.
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E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. This bonus newsletter from Davos explores the strategic relationship between CEOs and chief technology officers. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. In my previous life as a technology journalist, I wrote and edited countless stories about corporate chief technology officers (CTOs) emerging as key partners to their counterparts in the C-suite. When marketing functions became more data-driven, chief marketing officers clamored for attention from product and engineering. Today, chief financial officers (CFOs) push tech leaders to drive companies productivity gains from software and automation even as they scrutinize tech buying decisions. Now, as artificial intelligence (AI) and agents become pervasive at companies, CTOs have another executive to collaborate with: their bosses. In an interview with Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince and CTO Dane Knecht made the case for technology chiefs as strategic partners to CEOs. The C-suite syncs up Prince says Knecht has been instrumental in pushing him to adopt AI beyond fun use cases, such as creating amusing images for company slide presentations or invitations for his kids birthday party. The best CTOs in the world are going to be the ones that are saying to even the 51-year-old or 61-year-old or 71-year-old CEOs, You can do this too, says Prince, whose company provides customers with tools to protect and improve the performance of their websites. And if you can do that, its going to actually help you build better companies. Its a sentiment echoed by Nacho De Marco, CEO of global software development company BairesDev. (BairesDev partnered with Fast Company on the event featuring Prince and Knecht.) He says his clients, who turn to the company to help scale their engineering teams, see AI as essential to their future. When the CEO and CTO are aligned, that transition usually goes really well, he says. Knecht, who started out as Cloudflares first product manager, eventually took a role building and leading the companys emerging technologies and innovation (ETI) unit. Prince carved out 10% of the product and engineering budget for innovations that arent on any customers road mapand might even challenge Cloudflares existing business model. Prince credits the division with propelling the companys growth, saying: If Dane and the ETI team hadnt existed, Cloudflare would be yet another CDN [content delivery network]. Knecht, in turn, says Prince always nudges him to be more ambitious. You really dont ever bring Matthew an idea where he says, Thats a good idea, Knecht says. Hell say, Eh, think bigger. Its always, Think bigger. Two roles, one strategy Prince says he was somewhat reluctant to promote Knecht to CTO because Knecht was doing such a good job running the innovation skunkworks. However, Prince was impressed with how well he interacted with customers. Knecht has, for now, retained the ETI team as part of his responsibilities. Indeed, the ability to build relationships with customers is essential for CTOs intent on proving their strategic value to their CEOs. Tal Cohen, president of Nasdaq, says CTOs need to be able to understand how clients use the products their tech teams are building. He also encourages CTOs to become tech translators for their CEOs, helping their bosses understand major technology shifts, whether its the latest announcement from Nvidia or a breakthrough in their own industry. You need to demonstrate that youre three-dimensional, adds Cohen, who leads Nasdaqs Market Services and Financial Technology divisions. Working with your tech leads CEOs, how do you engage your CTO on strategy? And CTOs, how do you make sure that you are included in strategic conversations with your CEO? Send your examples and anecdotes to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Well share helpful examples in a future edition of the newsletter. Read more: the evolving C-suite Whats behind the surge in CFOs becoming CEOs Why so few human resources leaders become CEOs Im a CMO whos friends with my CFO
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E-Commerce
People know when a brand genuinely cares about well-beingfor employees, customers, and humanity at large. In many cases, its an intangible truth they can simply feelin how theyre treated, how decisions get made, and whether a companys stated values actually show up in practice. Plenty of brands talk about purpose and people. Fewer live it. And the difference is increasingly obvious. That gap is why brand well-being is emerging as a meaningful framework for companies that want to build durable growthnot just short-term performance. At its core, brand well-being recognizes that a brand isnt a logo or a campaign. Its a living ecosystem made up of people, culture, purpose, and consumer relationships. When one part breaks down, the entire system weakens. When all three are healthy, the brand becomes more resilient, trusted, and relevant over time. Importantly, this isnt abstract. Its a leadership choiceand one companies can control. What Is Brand Well-Being? Brand well-being is a holistic concept that encourages companies to prioritize wellness across three critical dimensions. Employee well-being asks a basic question: is work designed in a way that supports peoples physical, mental, and emotional health, or does it quietly drain them? Culture well-being examines whether a company operates with meaning and humanityand whether employees feel genuinely connected to each other and the work itself. Consumer well-being focuses on how brands show up in peoples lives: are they improving them in tangible ways, or simply competing for attention? If well-being is the equivalent of organizational health, the logic is straightforward. Healthier employees perform better. Purpose-driven cultures retain talent. Trust-based consumer relationships last longer. No business would argue against those outcomes. What company wouldnt want its workforce to be healthier, its culture more purposeful, and its consumer relationships more authentic? Yet many still treat well-being as a side initiative rather than a core strategy. The Business Case: Wellness Drives Work For years, wellness initiatives were framed as perksa nice box to check and a headline to score PR points. Too often, a companys wellness strategy is a daily app reminder that feels more like an annoying interruption or chore. The data tells a different story when well-being is approached consistently and strategically. A Cigna-commissioned study found that employer well-being programs delivered an average ROI of 47%, returning $1.47 for every dollar invested. According to Wellhub, 99% of HR leaders say wellness programs improve employee productivity. Meta-analyses show reductions in absenteeism and healthcare costs with ROI approaching 148%, saving hundreds of dollars per employee annually. Companies investing in well-being also see meaningful drops in turnoversometimes by as much as 25%. Well-being is no longer a bonus. Its a business strategyone that drives loyalty, retention, and performance at scale. One of the strongest validations comes from Indeeds Work Wellbeing 100, a data-driven ranking developed with Oxford University that evaluates publicly traded companies based on extensive employee survey data. Many of the companies that score highest on employee well-being also outperform the market and regularly appear on the Fortune 500. The correlation is hard to ignore: organizations that invest in well-being tend to outperform those that dont. Well-being isnt a costits a competitive advantage. Bringing Brand Well-Being to Life The challenge, of course, is moving from intent to impact. Brand well-being doesnt come from a single program or campaign. It requires expertise, lived experiences, and real feedback loopsinside and outside the organization. Done correctly, it can play a transformative role not only in deepening consumer relationships, but also in boosting cultural energy within the company itselfand yes, ultimately, productivity. Forward-thinking companies are starting to treat well-being as an integrated ecosystem. They bring credible experts into leadership and employee learning, focusing on sustainable performance, stress management, communication, and burnout prevention. They engage consumers through real-world experiences that foster connection rather than spectacle. And they create safe, personal environmentsevents, retreats, and small-group forumswhere people not only learn about mental and physical health, stress management, personal sustainability and nutrition, they feel comfortable sharing honest insights about their lives, needs, and expectations. Those insights, when fed back into product design, workplace culture, and brand strategy, become far more valuable than traditional surveys or focus groups. They allow brands to understand not just what people say, but how they actually feel. Importantly, the most effective brands integrate well-being naturally. Products and services show up as part of the experience, not as forced marketing moments. The goal isnt to sell wellness. Its to support it authentically. Ive seen brands like LOréal, the NBA, BlackRock, Bayer, Morgan Stanley, Volvo, Hackensack Meridian Health, and Wells Fargo experiment with this model through internal offsites, community experiences, and retreats hosted in well-being-focused environments. The result isnt just better moraleits stronger relationships, higher trust, and clearer insight into both employees and consumers. Over time, the impact drives increased happiness long after the event ends. The Leadership Question Every company says it wants to evolve. But evolution requires trade-offs. It means leading with care, connection, and long-term thinking in a system still optimized for speed and short-term returns. Some leaders already understand that investing in well-being is inseparable from investing in brand performance. Others still treat it as an optional expensesomething to revisit when margins allow. The market is increasingly clear about which group is winning. Brand well-being isnt about being nice. Its about building organizations that people want to work for, buy from, and believe inagain and again. The question facing todays leaders isnt whether well-being matters. Its whether theyre willing to lead knowing it does.
Category:
E-Commerce
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