The 2025 Virginia Icon Honors Awards

In my last column, I wrote about the lesson of 996 culture, an overwork philosophy that destroys value. Now, the next question is obvious: What actually creates it? The answer isn’t complicated, but it does require courage. Sustainable business success comes from workplaces where people feel valued, fulfilled and empowered. When employees feel their contributions […]

As the school year begins in Northern Virginia, many might assume the housing market cools as quickly as the morning air. While spring often grabs the spotlight as the busiest buying season, fall in our region has its own rhythm — shaped by shifting priorities, changing inventory, and unique economic forces. Spring and Summer 2025: […]

We’ve written about glass ceilings and glass cliffs, but to quote the Beatles, let’s look through the glass onion. What’s the glass onion? Well, it’s a metaphor I’m using to describe the multilayered challenges facing women who aspire to be CEOs. The good news is, there are more female CEOs than in years before, including […]

China’s 996 model — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — was sold as a path to speed, discipline, and dominance. In reality, it became a case study in how overwork corrodes the very foundation of business success. People can push themselves for a while, but there’s a ceiling. Past a certain […]

Perhaps the greatest symbol of tech companies’ uncanny valley visions for the AI-powered future are dark factories — also called lights-out factories, these AI-managed manufacturing plants are so fully automated that machines perform their work in full or near darkness 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without breaks — and largely without humans. […]