Ask Justin Fulcher what's holding back government modernization, and the answer isn't budget or ambition. It's infrastructure built for a world that no longer exists. The technology founder and former Department of Defense advisor has spent years arguing that agencies need to confront outdated systems directly before AI can deliver any real benefit.A System Built For 1975Fulcher's diagnosis is blunt. He has written that core government systems,...

Many people expect their financial advisor to offer reassurance, especially during volatile markets or uncertain times. Michael Gold, founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, pushes back against that expectation, arguing that comfort is not always the same thing as good advice."It's not our job to make people feel good because they saw something on CNBC," Gold says, describing the guiding principle behind his Westport...

Behind any well-known surgical technique is a practice built to sustain it. Dr. Andrew Jacono performs roughly 250 extended deep plane facelifts every year from his Manhattan office, a volume that reflects both demand and two decades of refinement on a single procedure.The technique in question, the Minimal Access Deep-Plane Extended facelift, departs from the SMAS approach that has defined facelift surgery for years. Rather than separating skin...

Chief executives often get cast as distant visionaries, but Michael Polk sees the job differently. After more than 40 years leading companies both large and small, the former Newell Brands chief executive says the role looks nothing like the stereotype, and he believes it needs to keep changing to match what markets and employees now expect.Public Company PressuresPolk spent much of his career at major corporations, including Kraft, Unilever,...

Client satisfaction above 95 percent is not a common benchmark in the podcast production business, but it is the standard Podcraft Media Lab has held since podcaster Greg Soros founded the company in Austin back in 2020. He built it after stepping away from a senior producer role at a prominent media company.Measuring Success in Small NumbersRather than expanding into a network churning out dozens of shows, Soros kept his company narrow,...

Two cities do most of the heavy lifting in Spain's startup story, and both sit at the center of the map drawn by Alejandro Betancourt López. Madrid and Barcelona have turned into real hubs, the kind that pull funding, engineers, and early customers into one place.Density is the whole point. Per Mordor Intelligence, the two cities concentrate venture money, engineering talent, and early-adopter merchants, so a young company doesn't need to board...

For Michael Gold, founder of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, the most common failure in ultra-high-net-worth advisory work is not bad investment advice. It is fragmentation. Families with substantial wealth often surround themselves with capable professionals’ attorneys, accountants, investment managers who nonetheless operate in silos, producing blind spots and missed opportunities.Gold's solution is what he terms orchestration....

When Michael Polk stepped away from Newell Brands after years as its chief executive, few observers expected him to return to an active management role. But in 2019, Polk came out of retirement to lead Implus, a smaller, private equity-backed company. The decision reflected his conviction that meaningful leadership does not require a massive platform it requires the right conditions for impact.What Changes at a Smaller CompanyThe move from a...

Energy Transfer, the company Kelcy Warren co-founded in 1996 and still chairs, has grown into one of the most consequential pieces of American energy infrastructure. Its nearly 125,000 miles of pipeline transport roughly 30 percent of the country's natural gas and petroleum, and the company stands as the only operator exporting natural gas liquids from both the Gulf Coast and the East Coast.Warren has framed Energy Transfer's expansion not as...