July 1 2018

Fast Company

Fast Company is the world’s leading progressive business media brand, with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, and design. Written for, by, and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company i

Fast Company2 min read
Seeing Business From 100 New Angles
One of the many insights Mary Kaye Schilling gleaned from spending time with Reese Witherspoon is that the award-winning actress and producer likes to play a parlor game with her family: They’ll watch television, and Witherspoon will pause the progra
Fast Company8 min read
It’s Time to Burst Silicon Valley’s Tech Bubble
Silicon Valley showrunner Alec Berg just wanted to let viewers in on the joke. When he started writing the satirical HBO series five years ago, the Valley seemed to him like a caricature, rife with overhyped tech products and self-aggrandizing corpor
Fast Company1 min read
Opening the Closet
Since launching in 2009, Rent the Runway has transformed from an evening-wear rental company to, in cofounder and CEO Jennifer Hyman’s words, a full-service “closet in the cloud,” offering members clothes and accessories for work, proms, weddings, pr
Fast Company5 min read
01-05 For Leading Americans Beyond Thoughts And Prayers
Jaclyn Corin, Emma González, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, and Alex Wind Cofounders, March for Our Lives Cameron Kasky recalls the eerie realization that descended upon the kids huddled in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School classroom where he an
Fast Company1 min readAutomotive
06 For Redefining Tesla’s Electric Cars—repeatedly
Franz von Holzhausen Chief designer, Tesla When Franz von Holzhausen joined Tesla in 2008, the electric-car startup was so inexperienced at vehicle design that it had to outsource most of the work on its original Roadster to the sports-car manufact
Fast Company1 min readPolitics
07 For Taking The Pain Out Of Security Checks
Caryn Seidman Becker Chairman and CEO, Clear “I love a good turnaround story,” says Caryn Seidman Becker, a former hedge-fund manager who bought the airport-focused biometric-identity company Clear out of bankruptcy in 2010. At the time, Clear’s ex
Fast Company15 min read
Changing The Narrative
Reese Witherspoon Founder, Hello Sunshine When Reese Witherspoon was 17, she had already appeared in four films. Still, she took an unlikely part-time job, as an intern in Disney’s post-production department. “I wanted to learn about editing, visua
Fast Company2 min read
12-13 For Translating Amazon Checkout To Real Life
Dilip Kumar and Gianna Puerini VP of technology, Amazon Go and Amazon Books / VP, Amazon Go Amazon earned its e-commerce bona fides more than 20 years ago by reducing the checkout process to a single click. The company’s new Amazon Go store, in dow
Fast Company1 min read
14 For Pinpointing Netflix Shows You’ll Want To Watch
Chris Jaffe VP of product innovation, Netflix Netflix’s army of subscribers—125 million and counting—drive the investor confidence that saw the company’s stock rise 60% in the first four months of this year. And it’s Chris Jaffe’s task to get those
Fast Company1 min readPsychology
16 For Tackling Concussions
Ann McKee Director of neuropathology service, VA Boston Healthcare System Ann McKee has been studying cadaver brains for decades, so when she first discovered signs of neurodegenerative disease in the brain of a former professional football player
Fast Company1 min read
18 For Placing DNA Sequencing In The Palm Of Your Hand
Gordon Sanghera Cofounder and CEO, Oxford Nanopore Technologies Scientists around the world have been using the MinION—a handheld device that can sequence DNA and RNA in real time and costs just $1,000—since Oxford Nanopore Technologies first relea
Fast Company1 min read
21 For Making Large-scale Healthcare Personal
Stephen Klasko President and CEO, Jefferson Health and Jefferson University “With AI on the horizon, training humans to be better robots doesn’t make sense,” says Stephen Klasko, CEO of Philadelphia’s Jefferson Health. “The doctor of the future nee
Fast Company2 min read
22 For Building Wakanda
Hannah Beachler Production designer The Afrofuturist sets of Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster Black Panther, with their blend of modernist forms and traditional African motifs, were the brainchild of Hannah Beachler, the production designer behind Miami’s
Fast Company1 min read
27 For Getting People To The Polls
Kat Calvin Founder, Spread the Vote More than 21 million Americans lack government-issued photo identification, yet an increasing number of states—including Texas, Wisconsin, and Georgia—have passed measures requiring IDs to vote, effectively suppr
Fast Company1 min read
28 For Connecting Us When The Grid Is Down
Daniela Perdomo Cofounder and CEO, goTenna The Problem: Entrepreneur Daniela Perdomo was living in Brooklyn in October 2012 when Hurricane Sandy struck, and large swaths of New York lost power and internet service. “It was like a Don DeLillo–type a
Fast Company2 min read
32 For Lyft-ing The Bar
Melissa Waters Vice president of marketing, Lyft Last year, ride-hailing company Lyft differentiated itself from bad-publicity magnet Uber by playing up its social responsibility. Melissa Waters, who joined Lyft in 2016 from Pandora, oversaw a quir
Fast Company2 min read
Finding Poetry In Adolescence
With clear language and bracing honesty, Jason Reynolds’s young-adult novels grapple with thorny issues (alcohol abuse, gun violence, police brutality) in contemporary urban settings.
Fast Company1 min read
42 For Teaching Us How To Cope With Tech Overload
Manoush Zomorodi Author and host, Note to Self As the host of WNYC’s six-year-old podcast Note to Self, Manoush Zomorodi helps listeners address some tricky contemporary issues: social media addiction, information overload, diminished privacy. “We
Fast Company1 min read
43 For Telling The Jokes Only She Can Tell
Amber Ruffin Writer and performer, Late Night With Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin became the first African-American woman ever to write for a late-night talk show when she joined the staff of Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2014, and she’s been crucial to
Fast Company1 min read
44 For Turning Commercials Into Stories
Nazanin Rafsanjani Vice president of new show development, Gimlet Media Chompers is a program aimed at the toddler set and available via Amazon’s Echo. Each episode is just a couple of podcast-like minutes of content, but Chompers manages to squeez
Fast Company2 min read
48 For Revitalizing Vacant Storefronts
Ross Bailey Founder and CEO, Appear Here Appear Here is an online marketplace for pop-up spaces that entrepreneur and designer Ross Bailey created five years ago in the U.K. It has since been used by more than 150,000 brands—including Apple and Nik
Fast Company2 min read
49 For Putting A Bow On E-commerce
Jesse Genet Cofounder and CEO, Lumi “Packaging is the new storefront,” says Jesse Genet, who founded Lumi with fellow industrial designer Stephan Ango in 2015 to sell bespoke packing materials—colorful cardboard boxes, eye-catching mailers, logo-pr
Fast Company1 min readEnvironmental Science
51 For Reforesting The Amazon
M. Sanjayan CEO, Conservation International Deforestation is responsible for one-tenth of global warming emissions. Conservation scientist M. Sanjayan has responded by recruiting a diverse coalition of technical and funding partners (from the World
Fast Company1 min read
52 For Incubating Walmart’s Future
Katie Finnegan VP of incubation, Walmart Global eCommerce Katie Finnegan grew up immersed in retail. Her father helped Mickey Drexler reinvent the Gap in the ’90s, and Finnegan remembers spending her adolescence going to store openings, listening t
Fast Company1 min read
58 For Powering Affordable Geothermal Homes
Kathy Hannun Cofounder and CEO, Dandelion THE PROBLEM: By using the earth’s natural temperature to either move heat into homes or extract it, geothermal systems can efficiently warm and cool houses with little environmental footprint. Trouble is, t
Fast Company2 min readFashion
Making Fashion Sizzle
Telfar Clemens Designer, Telfar Liberian-American designer Telfar Clemens’s approach to fashion is summarized in his current collection’s tagline: “Not for you—for everyone.” Inclusivity has been the organizing principle of his runway collections s
Fast Company2 min read
64 For Increasing The Exposure
Joshua Kissi Photographer and cofounder, Tonl Joshua Kissi, who founded the popular style blog Street Etiquette, which morphed into a creative agency, is turning his artistic eye toward the ordinary. Tonl, his new stock photography company, offers
Fast Company2 min readComputers
65 For Fattening The Apple Pay Wallet
Jennifer Bailey VP of internet services and Apple Pay, Apple Apple veteran Jennifer Bailey took over Apple Pay in 2014 with the goal of making it possible for iPhone users to leave their wallets at home. She has quickly turned the service into a co
Fast Company1 min read
67 For Investing In Overlooked Entrepreneurs
Kesha Cash Founder and general partner, Impact America Fund A former M&A analyst who grew up economically disadvantaged, Kesha Cash founded the Impact America Fund to make strategic early bets on companies that provide services to minority communit
Fast Company1 min read
71 For Featuring Tech In A Leading Role
Rodrigo Bellott Playwright and filmmaker “I come from a place of no. It’s not like the U.S. where you’re taught you can do anything,” says Bolivia-born Rodrigo Bellott, who took his country’s conservatism as a challenge. He went on to direct Bolivi
Fast Company1 min read
73 For Offering New Badges Of Honor
Sylvia Acevedo CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA When Sylvia Acevedo was a girl in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a Girl Scout troop leader encouraged her to build a model rocket for a science badge. That experience “was an inflection point in my life,” says Ac
Fast Company1 min read
74 For Ringing The Alarm On Harmful Tech
Tristan Harris Cofounder, Center for Humane Technology Tristan Harris was obsessed with magic as a kid and once earned $20 to perform tricks for his fourth-grade class. The experience taught him not only that misdirection could be profitable but al
Fast Company1 min readTelecommunications
78 For Amplifying Smartphone Volume
Larry Guterman Cofounder and chief customer officer, SonicCloud The Problem: Starting in college, through his career as a Hollywood director (2001’s Cats & Dogs) and executive producer (2015’s Holocaust drama Remember), Larry Guterman struggled wit
Fast Company2 min read
82 For Designing For The Apocalypse
Ane Crabtree Costume designer Tony Soprano’s bathrobe. Dolores Abernathy’s prairie dress. Offred’s red cloak. Veteran costume designer Ane Crabtree has created the iconic looks for numerous shows that have helped define the modern golden age of tel
Fast Company1 min read
88 For Inspiring Us To Clean House
Margareta Magnusson Author Death cleaning—known in Sweden, its country of origin, as döstädning—may sound morbid. But it’s really an act of love, says Margareta Magnusson, the 84-year-old first-time author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleanin
Fast Company1 min read
Sharing Her Tools
Pat McGrath Makeup artist and founder, Pat McGrath Labs Known simply as “Mother” in the makeup community, Pat McGrath probably taught your favorite YouTube beauty bloggers everything they know. She has crafted iconic runway looks for Prada and Give
Fast Company2 min read
90 For Helping Women Call The Shots
Alma Har’el Founder, Free the Bid Alma Har’el was tired of hearing the same old excuses for why brands and ad agencies weren’t hiring female directors, so at the end of 2016 she launched Free the Bid to get more women behind the camera. After commi
Fast Company1 min readSmall Business & Entrepreneurs
94-95 For Giving African Tech A Global Stage
Haweya Mohamed and Ammin Youssouf Cofounder and managing director / cofounder and CEO, Afrobytes In addition to the usual hurdles of fundraising and scaling, African tech founders face the fundamental misperception that they’re working in an innova
Fast Company1 min read
100 For Harvesting A Sustainable New Snack
Courtney Boyd Myers Cofounder and co-CEO, Akua Kelp keeps oceans clean (by absorbing nitrogen), offsets climate change (by exchanging carbon dioxide for lots of oxygen), and grows quickly. A staple of Japanese diets, it’s increasingly featured in r

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