TOPLINE: American gymnast Simone Biles has withdrawn from Thursday’s individual all-around gymnastics final at the Tokyo Olympic Games to focus on her mental health, USA Gymnastics announced on Wednesday, a decision that comes just a day after the four-time Olympic gold medalist had to withdraw from the team event.



<h3 id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/USAGym/status/1420266286441922562" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement issued on Twitter</a>, USA Gymnastics said Biles’ decision to withdraw was taken following further medical evaluation and it backed the champion gymnast for prioritizing her well-being.



Biles—who won gold in the all-around event in Rio—was scheduled to defend her title in the finals on Thursday.&nbsp;



American gymnast Jade Carey, who ranked ninth in the all-around prelims, will take Biles’ spot in the finals, USA Gymnastics added.



<h3 id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h3>



Apart from the all-around individual event, Biles is in the finals of the four other gymnastics disciplines. The finals of the Vault and Uneven Bars are scheduled to take place on Sunday, the Floor final is scheduled for Monday and the Beam final is on Tuesday. It is unclear if Biles will be able to participate in any of these events.



<h3 id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h3>



“We wholeheartedly support Simone&#8217;s decision and applaud her bravery in prioritising her wellbeing. Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many,” USA Gymnastics said.



<h3 id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h3>



19. That’s the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/simone-biles-medals-tokyo-2021-b1891221.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">total number</a>&nbsp;of gold medals Biles has won in world events—including the Olympics—making her the most successful gymnast in history. Her achievements also include three silver and three bronze medals at the world level, taking her total medal tally up to 25.



<h3 id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



Biles, widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/07/27/simone-biles-pulls-out-of-gymnastics-team-finals-in-huge-blow-to-gold-medal-hopes-for-team-usa/?sh=336c9d364628">pulled out</a>&nbsp;of the team gymnastics final on Tuesday after a vault attempt. Despite her absence, the U.S. team managed to put together a strong performance and managed to secure a silver medal, with the Russian Olympic Committee winning gold. After the event, Biles&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/07/27/simone-biles-says-she-pulled-out-of-olympic-team-gymnastics-over-her-mental-health/?sh=6a5b4b81725e">said</a>&nbsp;she pulled out of the event to focus on her mental health, telling reporters she feared she would injure herself because she wasn’t in the right headspace to perform the risky gymnastics moves in her routine. The star gymnast’s decision to open up about her mental health challenged has earned her praise with fellow athletes and other public figures expressing their support. Former first lady Michelle Obama&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/MichelleObama/status/1420202408215564288" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;her support for Biles late on Tuesday night saying “we are proud of you and we are rooting for you.” Swimming legend Michael Phelps, who holds the all-time record for Olympic gold medals,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/28/michael-phelps-simone-biles/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;Biles’s struggles “broke his heart.” The swimmer who has opened about his own struggles with depression said on Tuesday: “We carry a lot of weight on our shoulders, and it is challenging especially when the lights are on us.” Biles’ Rio 2016 teammate Aly Raisman&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/Aly_Raisman/status/1420020980198649860" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">congratulated</a>&nbsp;the U.S. Team for winning silver and simply&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/Aly_Raisman/status/1420062022461534215" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;“Love you” at Biles.



<h3 id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/57973716" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simone Biles out of individual all-around final</a>&nbsp;(BBC News)



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/07/28/michael-phelps-simone-biles/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael Phelps: Simone Biles situation ‘broke my heart’ but could raise mental health awareness</a>&nbsp;(Washington Post)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/07/27/simone-biles-says-she-pulled-out-of-olympic-team-gymnastics-over-her-mental-health/?sh=6a5b4b81725e">Simone Biles Says She Pulled Out Of Olympic Team Gymnastics Over Her Mental Health</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

Gymnastics – Artistic – Olympics: Day 4

Simone Biles Withdraws From Individual All-Around Final As Support Pours In

When Victor Terry answered a call from State Farm CEO Michael Tipsord and chief administrator Mary Schmidt in June, he wasn’t expecting the news he received. “To hear them say, ‘Victor, we want to make you our first chief diversity officer,’ was really a moment that’s hard to describe,” says Terry, then an area vice president. “We had already experienced the murder of George Floyd and everything that unfolded Memorial Day weekend, but I didn’t see that coming.”



Perhaps he should have: A seat in the C-suite signals a company’s commitment to the area the role represents. In appointing Terry as CDO, State Farm did just that for diversity and inclusion. But it wasn’t the only organization to mint a new chief diversity officer this past year.



According to an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whos-reaching-c-suite-2020-16-roles-have-momentum-george-anders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis of nearly 100,000 U.S. C-suite appointments</a>&nbsp;by LinkedIn, while overall C-level hiring declined 18% year-over-year, some roles, such as that of diversity chief, saw great growth. CDO appointments increased at a rate of 84% as a proportion of total C-suite hires in 2020 as compared to 2019—more than any other C-level role—with Terry, as well as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sonymusic.com/sonymusic/sony-music-group-appoints-tiffany-r-warren-executive-vice-president-chief-diversity-and-inclusion-officer/#:~:text=New%20York%2C%20October%2014%2C%202020,Chief%20Diversity%20and%20Inclusion%20Officer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sony Music’s Tiffany R. Warren</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pressroom.ups.com/pressroom/ContentDetailsViewer.page?ConceptType=PressReleases&amp;id=1607452098783-458" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UPS’ Charlene Thomas</a>, being among those tapped to serve as their companies’ firsts.



Recent years have seen C-suites expand to encompass titles beyond the traditional CFO, CMO, COO and, of course, CEO. And while some newcomers have been sector-specific—think, <a href="https://investors.virgingalactic.com/news/news-details/2020/Virgin-Galactic-Announces-Michael-Colglazier-as-Chief-Executive-Officer-in-Preparation-for-Commercial-Service/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Virgin Galactic’s chief space officer</a>, Michael Colglazier, named in July—most mirror the state of business and, more broadly, the world. “We’re going through a crisis, but at the same time, C-suites and boards are saying, ‘We need to reset,’” says Radhika Papandreou, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. “They need to make sure they have the right talent to not only recover, but to use the recovery as an opportunity to innovate.” And so it’s no wonder so many chief diversity officers made their debuts in 2020 amid the national reckoning on racial injustice.



For Terry, who had spent the better part of his 23 years with the insurer driving diversity and inclusion through its African American employee resource group, his appointment meant formalizing the organization’s efforts, facilitating company-wide conversations about race and creating a D&amp;I governance council. “This group is charged with refining and shaping our enterprise strategy,” Terry says. “While I have the formal title, and it’s something where I have a high degree of ownership and accountability, the truth of the matter is for any diversity and inclusion initiative to be successful, it has to live in the business, it has to be integrated into everything that we do.”



Diversity officers aren’t the only chiefs who have been in demand as a result of the events of 2020. When the coronavirus pandemic forced countless companies to embrace remote work overnight, chief revenue officers found themselves more reliant than ever before on marketing and technology to maintain healthy bottom lines. Some corporations consolidated these functions under the role of chief growth officer.&nbsp;



“You can have such a rigid split that it’s hard for everyone to cooperate and work together, to build the kinds of projects that are multi-teamed,” says George Anders, senior editor at large at LinkedIn and author of the study. “Having a chief growth officer provides a way that someone can look over the walls and see how all the pieces fit together.”



Chief growth officers were hired at a rate of 46% in 2020—second only to CDOs—after several years of steadily gaining steam, with such <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-found-57-routes-c-suite-youre-problem-fixer-step-right-anders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">appointments increasing 42%</a> from 2015 to 2019. Gap and eBay were among those organizations to tap their first CGOs, naming <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201124005379/en/Gap-Inc.-Appoints-New-Chief-Growth-Officer-and-New-President-and-CEO-of-Banana-Republic" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Asheesh Saksena</a> and <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ebay-names-julie-loeger-global-chief-growth-officer-301183002.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Julie Loeger</a> in November and December. Meanwhile, Mars Wrigley expanded the responsibilities associated with its existing global growth officer role upon promoting <a href="https://www.mars.com/news-and-stories/press-releases/mars-wrigley-introduces-new-chief-growth-officer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cathryn Sleight</a> to the job in July.



sumer behaviors and tastes have changed amid Covid-19, having all of these areas under one umbrella has paid dividends, chief among them partnerships with food delivery services DoorDash and goPuff, and the acquisitions of Kind and Nature’s Bakery.



But that’s not to say Sleight works in a silo. In fact, she often finds herself collaborating with one of her more traditional counterparts: the CFO. “We need to make sure that the programs we put in place have strong ROIs and are delivering the right level of growth to ensure we capture our fair share of the profit pools,” she says. “Working things through together, you get much better solutions.”



If the state of the C-suite is a reflection of the state of the world, it should come as no surprise that chief medical officer appointments increased in 2020. While it certainly isn’t a new position—or at least not in hospitals and healthcare companies, where it’s long been commonplace—and its growth rate wasn’t as high as that of CDOs and CGOs—LinkedIn pegs it at 4%—the coronavirus pandemic has spurred its expansion into new industries. PepsiCo and Tyson tapped <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/news/press-release/pepsico-appoints-dr.-pietro-antonio-tataranni-as-chief-medical-officer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Pietro Antonio Tataranni</a> and <a href="https://ir.tyson.com/news/news-details/2020/Tyson-Foods-Launches-New-Nationwide-COVID-Monitoring-Strategy-Expands-Health-Staff/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Claudia Coplein</a> for their newly created chief medical officer roles in November and December, and <a href="https://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/press-release/1459/royal-caribbean-group-names-dr-calvin-johnson-global-head-public-health-and-chief-medical-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Royal Caribbean hired Dr. Calvin Johnson</a> as its first CMO and global head of public health in July.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“I don’t think these were knee-jerk reactions to what we’ve gone through. Some of this had already been thought about in board and C-suites—the pandemic accelerated the decisions.”-Radhika Papandreou, senior client partner, Korn Ferry</blockquote>



“Truth be told, if you’d asked me a few months earlier, I would not have believed you,” says Dr. Johnson of his appointment. “In a word, it was the pandemic. It literally stopped Royal in its tracks.”



The travel and hospitality industry has been hard hit by Covid-19, and cruise companies, including Royal Caribbean, were among the first to feel its effect, their common spaces and close quarters ideal settings for outbreaks. While Royal Caribbean did have healthcare infrastructure in place, as well as individuals to oversee it on a part-time basis, it didn’t have a dedicated leader, let alone one who had the ear of the CEO.



“A lot of C-level titles are created when companies have a crisis,” Anders says. “In 2019, we saw a lot of tech companies creating chief people officers. That happened to coincide with a sense that some tech companies were having a hard time getting the human side of their companies right.”



Like all medical chiefs, Dr. Johnson is responsible for delivering care to patients, in his case passengers and crew. He oversees more than 60 medical sites on ships sailing all around the world. During a global public health crisis, this means being in constant communication with his fellow executives. “Normal crew movement, which before wouldn’t necessarily have to have medical or public health involvement, now does because it involves ensuring the crew coming on board isn’t coming on with the virus. It is testing, screening and educating, from a prevention perspective,” Dr. Johnson says. “For crew rotating off, it’s ensuring they’re not taking the virus off and into the community.”



Would Royal Caribbean have needed a chief medical officer had it not been for Covid-19? It’s hard to say. But as reactive as the appointment—and that of this year’s other C-suite recruits—may have been, it’s not likely to result in a transient tenure. “I don’t think these were knee-jerk reactions to what we’ve gone through,” says Papandreou. “Some of this had already been thought about inboard and C-suites—the pandemic accelerated the decisions.”



-by Vicky Valet, Forbes Staff

Businesswoman looks across city at sunrise

The New C-Suite: How 2020 Shaped Corporate America’s Executive Ranks

Over the last few years, David Dobrik has given away more than a dozen cars to family and friends, filming the spectacles for his channel on YouTube, where the comedian is one of the site’s biggest stars. The first time was back in September 2016, when&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVXbKqzKZFw" target="_blank">he gave</a>&nbsp;then-girlfriend and fellow YouTube star Liza Koshy a white Tesla. He’s since doled out&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok5aimwxavI" target="_blank">a Mercedes to his mom</a>,&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFEJaAZU3nw" target="_blank">a BMW to his dad</a>, a Lamborghini to one&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FWdlYB7H0o" target="_blank">very, very lucky friend</a>&nbsp;and, most recently, a baby blue Ford Bronco&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMbRu3YkmJo" target="_blank">to his assistant</a>. Dobrik relishes capturing the recipients’ surprise on camera—the gifts’ outsize nature creating an overtop moment that he considers internet gold. Some people have cried. Others have screamed. The videos are among his most popular on YouTube, where he has 18.8 million subscribers and where such videos typically get around 12 million views. Just as David Letterman had his&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-P-bEHKVIE" target="_blank">Stupid Pet Tricks</a>&nbsp;and Jay Leno his&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqmQJXdqrM" target="_blank">man-on-the-street quizzes</a>, the car giveaways have become a piece of signature Dobrik schtick.



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https://twitter.com/DavidDobrik/status/1311044061969571840?s=20
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In August, a fan of Dobrik’s made&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@fallafalous/video/6856856616155811078" target="_blank">a TikTok video</a>&nbsp;that urged Dobrik to do another giveaway while asking entrants to register to vote. At first, Dobrik didn’t want to. To him, the joke—the grand reveal, the wild looks of surprise—had started to run out of gas. “It’s gotten old,” he says. But he knew how much people loved this routine and figured there’d probably be no better way to drive his Gen Z-dominated audience to register to vote. So last Tuesday he posted&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CFu4_mKMYYm/" target="_blank">an Instagram picture</a>&nbsp;of himself surrounded by five white Tesla Model 3s. To have a chance to win one of the Musk-mobiles, you had to share his post on your account, tag a friend in a comment and see whether you’re registered through&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.headcount.org/" target="_blank">HeadCount.org</a>, a non-partisan group devoted to increasing voting rolls. 



“I can’t vote. I’m not a citizen. I think that’s why I wanted to do this,” says Dobrik, 24, a Slovakian immigrant who is one of the so-called Dreamers, recipients of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA, as the legislation is known, allows people brought to America as children to live and work here. “I wanted to go, like, ‘Hey, guys! I can’t vote. I’d love to, but the best I can do is you guys go vote on my behalf.’ ”



By directing his fans to a voter-registration portal run by HeadCount.org, the New York-based organization was able to count up how many people registered from Dobrik’s Instagram post: nearly 120,000. It’s the single largest voting drive in the 16-year history of HeadCount, which has worked with many celebrities, mostly musicians. Other recent HeadCount partners included Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.



It’s common enough for all types of stars to lend their voices to political causes and to encourage people to vote, and much of this work is now carried out digitally. HeadCount is one of the most active in the space, and in founder Andy Bernstein’s experience, the highest-profile celebs tend to bring in perhaps a few thousand newly registered voters. The 120,000 from Dobrik’s push? “Absolutely unprecedented. Never seen anything like it,” Bernstein says. “We’ve registered close to 1 million voters over our lifetime, and more than a tenth of that has now come from David.”



Experts who study voting registration and elections pointed to two other prominent registration pushes in 2020 from outside the major political parties: the 1 million-plus voters Snapchat says&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/10/01/more-than-1-million-people-have-registered-to-vote-through-snapchat-65-of-them-under-24/">it has gotten to register</a>&nbsp;and the 2.5 million that Facebook has persuaded to do the same thing. Dobrik’s Tesla campaign then is likely the single biggest voter registration success by an individual this year and one of the largest by an individual in modern American politics—a profound testament to the draw of Dobrik’s brand of youthful goofiness.



“Using a social media star to push people to a digital registration site has that kind of smoothness that really facilitates immediate action,” says Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin professor who has long researched voter registration and elections. He does, reasonably, caution that voter registration does not at all translate to 100% participation in the next election. Nonetheless, Burden says, such a voter registration drive would’ve been “much harder in an analog setup where someone was communicating in a TV ad, and they wanted you to go get a form and mail it in.”



Kudos then to Dobrik, one of the funniest fellows on the internet today. He’s been digitally famous for a while now—and seems increasingly close to achieving the type of fame normally reserved for the men behind desks on late night TV. “If you ask somebody in their 40s who David Dobrik is, they know who David is—if they have kids and teenagers,” says Bernstein. “If they don’t have kids, they probably don’t.”



Dobrik came to America as a kid, arriving at age 6 from Košice, Slovakia and grew up in Chicago. While in high school, his first triumphs on the internet came through Vine, the briefly luminous social media app built on six-second clips. The zaniness of Vine informed the antics he began taping for YouTube in 2015. In the preceding years, he has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bav1DzAnitc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">loaded a Slip ‘N Slide</a>&nbsp;into the back of a moving truck;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SLeGyT0Smo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filled someone’s mouth</a>&nbsp;with Mentos and Coca-Cola; built a slide and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIYzdIphPzM" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ridden a kayak</a>&nbsp;down it with his dad; and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPJKbXuP-_A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">taught a friend’s mom</a>&nbsp;the lyrics to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zencBD3z68" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“I Love It”</a>&nbsp;by Lil Pump and Kanye West (“I’m a sick f—k, I like a quick f—k”). Along the way, he has palled around on camera with such other celebrities as singer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRPNw6_SfTA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Charlie Puth,</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VF0GEf3S0I" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Justin Bieber</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_OBMAY18s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Steve-O</a>, the star of&nbsp;Jackass,&nbsp;a TV show that has clearly informed some of Dobrik’s sensibilities. Each video runs exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds, a nod to April 20, a holiday to marijuana enthusiasts as Oktoberfest is to beer drinkers.



Dobrik’s stuff is good natured enough to be brand friendly, and he has earned sponsorship dollars from Warner Bros, Bumble, Electronic Arts and SeatGeek. Earlier this year, he stopped posting on YouTube and pivoted entirely to TikTok, where he has attracted 23 million followers. Dobrik’s delight in collaborations has worked well there too, where he has struck up a tight friendship with Addison Rae Easterling, one of TikTok’s biggest stars and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/08/06/tiktoks-highest-earning-stars-teen-queens-addison-rae-and-charli-damelio-rule/">its top earner</a>. In January, he appeared on&nbsp;The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.&nbsp;Dobrik now has his own cosmetics line, the simply named David’s Perfume, and he is also the founder of a camera app called Dispo that has newly raised $4 million from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and other investors. As its name suggests,&nbsp;<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dispo-single-use-camera/id1124432145" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dispo</a>&nbsp;mimics old fashioned disposable cameras—taking digital images that a user does not see until the next day.



In his voting initiative, Dobrik stopped short of directly advocating who his audience should vote for. “My least favorite thing is when the comments section on my videos—which is supposed to be a fun place—get political, and a bunch of people are yelling at other,” he says. “I try to keep out of it.” Left unsaid are the implications around DACA, the immigration law allowing Dobrik to hang out a shingle in entertainment. The legislation is a Obama hallmark, a piece of legislation trumpeted by Democrats and one that President Trump has tried hard to end. Meanwhile, his dad, who’s ineligible for DACA, is in the middle of deportation hearings, Dobrik says.



As for the winners of the Teslas, they’ve already been selected, and on Monday afternoon, Dobrik was preparing to FaceTime them, though none would know it was him calling rather than some member of his team. As in the past, he was very much looking forward to the astonished looks on their faces but was unsure whether he’d publish any of these videos online. “Sometimes,” he says, “I just do it for my own enjoyment.’



-By Abram Brown, Forbes Staff

Comedy Central Roast Of Alec Baldwin – Arrivals

David Dobrik’s Tesla Giveaway Was Probably One Of The Largest U.S. Voter Registration Drives—Ever

Ruth Porat, the stalwart chief financial officer of Alphabet and Google, is no stranger to a crisis. She began her career at Morgan Stanley in 1987, a mere seven weeks before Black Monday—the largest single-day decline in trading history at the time. “At that moment, I was concerned that maybe my career was over before it even started,” she recalls.



Far from it. Porat is one of the rare corporate executives to have transcended the upper echelons of Wall Street to the highest ranks of Silicon Valley. While the scenery may be different, many of the challenges remain the same: navigating economic downturns, government investigations and regulatory hurdles. Of course, a global pandemic is a new obstacle. “This environment is more challenging than anything I&#8217;ve seen because you&#8217;re combining a health crisis with an economic crisis,” says Porat in her first-ever interview with&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;from her home in Palo Alto, California. “The path forward is less certain.”&nbsp;



But Porat has deftly charted a path through uncertain territory before. During her 28-year tenure at Morgan Stanley, she held roles such as vice chairman of investment banking and global head of financial institutions before ultimately rising to the rank of chief financial officer in January 2010. “I certainly started in banking when it was not easy to be a woman in banking,” she says. “I haven’t thought about those shoulder pads for a long time, the bow ties, the scarves, the scotch, the horrible efforts to fit in.” What kept her there, she says, was the opportunity to “keep learning and growing”—remarkably, in the face of great turmoil. Case in point: being called upon by the U.S. government to help with the bailouts of insurance giant AIG and mortgage-financing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the Great Recession. “Much like the current crisis environment, one of the highlights of my career was advising the U.S. Treasury Department during the 2008 financial crisis,” she says. “I was able to use the skills I developed over a [lifelong] career for something that was so important at that moment in time for the country.”&nbsp;



Over a decade later, Porat has the same steely resolve when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, which has already taken a tremendous toll on the U.S. economy. Over 100,000 businesses permanently shuttered as of April, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26989.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. At the same time, 88% of small business owners say they’ve used all of their Paycheck Protection Program loan funding, according to a recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/small-business-confidence-goldman-sachs-74ba6e69-ad0e-4cb5-bee3-d03445b2a30e.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>&nbsp;of over 1,500 businesses conducted by Goldman Sachs. And without additional government funds, 30% say they’ll exhaust their cash reserves by the end of the year. That’s why Porat is leading Google’s latest efforts to help get America’s ravaged small businesses and economy back on track. This while managing one of the world’s largest corporate balance sheets amid the looming threat of anti-trust lawsuits that may hold the fate of the entire tech industry in the balance. It may just prove to be her greatest challenge yet.



While Google is a corporate behemoth, its roots are in small business. “It’s so clear that small businesses are the lifeblood of the American economy,” says Porat, rattling off the stats: They provide about two thirds of net new jobs, and 67 cents of every dollar spent at a small business stays in the local economy.



At the start of the pandemic, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced an <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/commitment-support-small-businesses-and-crisis-response-covid-19/" target="_blank">$800 million commitment</a> to aid small businesses and provide overall crisis relief. Of that, a $200 million Grow with Google Small Business fund was launched in March in partnership with the Opportunity Finance Network—a national association of community development financial institutions—with a mission to serve small businesses underserved by mainstream finance and a proven model for moving capital into the hardest to serve communities. The main objective? Supporting the short-term recovery and long-term financing needs of small businesses hardest hit by Covid-19. To be clear, this is not a handout. The majority of funds are earmarked as up to 10-year term loans at no greater than 3% interest. Some $340 million in Google Ads credits were also made available to all small businesses with active accounts over the past year.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large">“Small businesses are part of our DNA as a company&#8230;Over 21 years ago, Google itself was a small business that started in a two-car garage and our first ads customer was a mail-order lobster business in Maine.” <cite>Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet &amp; Google</cite></blockquote>



“Small businesses are part of our DNA as a company,” says Porat, sharing the company’s approach to small business for the first time since the pandemic began. “We often talk internally about the fact that over 21 years ago, Google itself was a small business that started in a two-car garage and our first ads customer was a mail-order lobster business in Maine.”&nbsp;



In many ways, Porat sees her transition to Silicon Valley as getting back to her roots. She was raised in Palo Alto, California, where her father, a former research fellow at Harvard, moved the family to take&nbsp; a position at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. After earning her bachelor’s degree in economics and international relations at Stanford in 1979, she went on to get her master’s degree in industrial relations from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Wharton before joining Morgan Stanley. Porat was co-head of technology investment banking during the ‘90s tech boom, working alongside famed internet analyst Mary Meeker, who is godmother to her three children. “Tech was something I had done quite a bit, actually,” says Porat. That’s an understatement: She was the chief architect behind the debt financing that saved Amazon from near collapse during the dot-com crash in 2000 and then worked on Google’s IPO in 2004. “It was great to see the vision, the mission, the drive of Google at such an early stage,” she says. “Given I’ve known Google since inception, and how passionate I was about the company, when the opportunity presented itself, I said yes on the spot.”



While Porat has broken the glass ceiling time and again, Google has struggled with diversity within its own ranks. As racial tensions reached a boiling point this summer, Google <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ofn.org/articles/ofn-announces-first-round-google-loans-and-googleorg-funded-grants" target="_blank">announced</a> in June an additional $45 million in loans and $5 million in Google.org grants to assist small businesses, with a focus on Black-owned businesses. The company committed to increase the diversity of its leadership 30% by 2025. “Hopefully this is the moment that changes race relations and really addresses racial inequality. There is no more time—and so we’re taking a hard look at ways we can help address systemic racism against the Black community with a real sense of urgency,” she says.



The company also announced the first round of the Grow with Google Small Business Fund. Five community development financial institutions (CDFIs)&nbsp; were awarded a total of $15.5 million in loans, and six received $750,000 in grants. Among those awarded were Grameen America, a non-profit founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunnus (and currently run by Andrea Jung, former chairman and CEO of Avon) that provides microloans, training and support to diverse low-income women entrepreneurs and Citizens Potawatomi Community Development Corporation, one of the largest Native-owned CDFIs in the nation. “Systemic inequities, like the racial wealth gap create significant disadvantages for minority communities, which is why we’re so focused on providing Black, Latinx and other underserved communities with more equitable access to capital through our partnership,” says Porat.&nbsp;



The partnership is also unique in structure compared to relief efforts of other tech firms like Facebook and Amazon. “What makes Google such a strategic first mover and different is their focus on recovery versus just short-term relief,” says Lisa Mensah, president and CEO of OFN. “It is extremely rare for a corporate Treasury to release $170 million and judge on their own that this is the kind of debt they will hold. They didn’t wait for a risk rating from S&amp;P or to have it all guaranteed by the government or another source—Google is a trailblazer.”



For Porat, it was a chance to help reposition businesses that were already at a significant disadvantage prior to the pandemic. “Most small businesses are started with personal assets and loans that are typically guaranteed with one’s network,” says Porat. “But if you start with the types of wealth disparities that we have in society where only 20% of small businesses are minority-owned and only 21% are women-owned, our current situation is an outgrowth of that initial disparity.”&nbsp;



The small business lending space is a massive market, one with around <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://qedinvestors.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/The-Brave-100-The-Battle-for-Supremacy-in-Small-Business-Lending_vf.pdf" target="_blank">$800 billion in annual originations</a> and an antiquated process involving tedious paperwork, manual inputs and very little transparency—or software, for that matter. Will Google, a company whose founders famously spoke in 2014 of the need for “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.inc.com/laura-montini/larry-page-says-its-time-to-think-big.html" target="_blank">revolutionary change</a>,” set its sights on disrupting the small business lending space next? Porat quickly puts that idea to rest. “We’re not a financial institution and we don’t intend to become [one],” she asserts.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large">“The biggest compliment I can give someone is to say they are a real difference-maker—that’s Ruth.”<cite>Hank Paulson, former U.S. Treasury Secretary &amp; former Goldman Sachs CEO</cite></blockquote>



Throughout her decades-long career, Porat has seen great success bridging divides to find solutions. “The biggest compliment I can give someone is to say they are a real difference maker—that’s Ruth,” says Hank Paulson, former U.S. Treasury Secretary during the financial crisis and a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. In 2013, Porat landed on President Barack Obama’s shortlist for deputy treasury secretary until she withdrew her name,&nbsp;<a href="https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/ruth-porat-withdraws-name-from-deputy-treasury-race/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;over concerns of how bankers were being treated by politicians. “She&#8217;s a real U.S. patriot with a passion for public service.”&nbsp;



To be fair, Google’s efforts are not just altruism. They are growth engines for big business—and of course, some good publicity doesn’t hurt. The over 30 million small businesses across the U.S. drive nearly half of all of gross domestic product. Globally, small and medium-sized enterprises represent over 90% of the business population and 55% of gross domestic in developed economies, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ifac.org/knowledge-gateway/contributing-global-economy/discussion/foundation-economies-worldwide-small-business-0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">World Trade Organization</a>. And like many of their industry peers like Facebook, Google relies on small businesses for a sizable portion of their business, although they, along with their competitors, do not disclose the actual amount.



“I look back on some of the toughest times in my career, and I know that I’ve learned from them,” says Porat, a two-time breast cancer survivor.  “That ghastly, terrifying experience was also a gift because that proverbial question became all too real: What happens if you are given no more than five years to live?” she shared in her <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGdugTS_RR8" target="_blank">2016 Wharton commencement speech</a>. “So I set about figuring it out: What did I want to do with what could be a limited amount of time? And I realized I simply had no regrets. I hadn’t punted on my life—I hadn’t put things on hold. My lesson from that awful experience was that if you want to do something, then do it . . . life doesn’t know it’s supposed to follow a schedule.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large">“In the midst of tremendous disruption and market turmoil, Ruth’s judgment and experience are invaluable.”<cite>Stephen Schwarzman, cofounder &amp; CEO of Blackstone</cite></blockquote>



That can-do anything attitude and fortitude may just be a key part of her recipe for not just surviving crises—but emerging stronger as a result of them. “In the midst of tremendous disruption and market turmoil, Ruth’s judgement and experience are invaluable,” says Stephen Schwarzman, cofounder and CEO of Blackstone. “It is rare to find people who have operated at the highest levels on Wall Street and Silicon Valley and that combination is exceptionally powerful.” In June, she joined the board of the $564 billion private-equity powerhouse, whose IPO she also worked on in 2007.



Porat is quick to acknowledge that the tough times she’s endured pale in comparison to much of the pain being felt in the world today. Yet, history has taught her to still believe in the promise of better days ahead.&nbsp;



 “For those who are looking at this moment and wondering the path forward, I would say that having lived through many turbulent times before, there are recoveries,” she says. “New opportunities arise out of crises.”



by Maneet Ahuja, Forbes Staff

Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit 2018 – Day 1

Exclusive: Ruth Porat On Leading Through Crisis And Google’s Latest Moonshot To Rebuild The U.S. Economy—One Small Business At A Time

Apple hit a new milestone on Wednesday, becoming the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a market capitalization of over $2 trillion and doubling in valuation over the last two years.



KEY FACTS



The iPhone maker’s stock is up almost 55% so far in 2020, and shares have rallied more than 106% since the market hit a low point amid the coronavirus recession on March 23 (compared to the benchmark S&amp;P 500’s gain of 51% over that period).



Now trading at nearly $470 per share, Apple’s stock is at an all-time high, and Wall Street analysts are still quite bullish that it can continue to rally: 61% give it a “buy” rating and 27% a “hold” rating, according to Bloomberg data.



Apple’s market cap now eclipses that of other U.S. tech giants, including Microsoft ($1.7 trillion), Amazon ($1.6 trillion), Google parent Alphabet ($1.1 trillion) and Facebook ($761 billion).



Apple was also the first U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market cap, which it did just over two years ago, on August 2, 2018.



On July 31, 2020, after reporting strong&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">third-quarter earnings</a>, Apple surpassed Saudi state oil giant Aramco to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.



While Saudi Aramco&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/12/saudi-aramco-hits-2-trillion-market-cap-on-second-day-of-trading.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">surpassed a $2 trillion valuation</a>&nbsp;in December 2019, plunging oil prices amid the coronavirus pandemic have since hurt its stock.



SURPRISING FACT



At $2 trillion, Apple’s market value is now&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1296095582533148674?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">higher than the GDP</a>&nbsp;of numerous developed countries, including Italy, Brazil, Canada, Russia and South Korea, to name a few.



WHAT TO WATCH FOR



Apple shares are about to get more affordable for investors, too. The company will finalize its four-for-one stock split at the end of August, which means a single share will be worth around $117. While the value of the company will remain the same, there will now be more shares available trading at lower prices.



KEY BACKGROUND



Apple has thrived during the pandemic, as many people were forced to stay at home. The company has benefited from work-from-home trends and strong online sales; It posted record third-quarter earnings in late July, with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">nearly $60 billion in revenue</a>, not to mention double-digit growth in its products and services segments.



FURTHER READING



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/13/competition-from-apple-wont-derail-peloton-analysts-say/">Could Competition From Apple Derail Peloton? Not So Fast, Analysts Say</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/24/apple-microsoft-amazon-google-and-facebook-make-up-a-record-chunk-of-the-sp-500-heres-why-that-might-be-dangerous/">Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google And Facebook Make Up A Record Chunk Of The S&amp;P 500. Here’s Why That Might Be Dangerous</a> (Forbes)



-Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff

DOUNIAMAG-US-IT-APPLE-NEWS-FEED

Apple Becomes First U.S. Company Worth More Than $2 Trillion

Gold reached a record high of more than $2,000 an ounce on Tuesday, as investors, spooked by a weakening dollar, volatility triggered by coronavirus and ever rising U.S. cases, continue to look for a safe haven to move their money into.



<h2>KEY FACTS</h2>



<ul><li>Gold hit a high of $2,041.33 an ounce on Wednesday, after exceeding $2,000 for the first time on Tuesday.</li></ul>



<ul><li>The precious metal has gained more than 34% this year, making it one of 2020’s best-performing assets, Reuters&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/global-precious/precious-gold-cruises-to-new-high-above-2000-oz-idUKL8N2F7322" target="_blank">reports</a>.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Gold isn’t the only precious metal to have gained significantly, with the price of silver jumping to its highest level since 2013, and rising 50% overall this year.</li></ul>



<ul><li>The dollar weakened to two-year lows last week as lawmakers in Washington work to agree another stimulus deal.</li></ul>



<h2>KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Governments and central banks across the world are unleashing stimulus packages worth some $20 trillion into the global economy, according to the Bank of America, in a bid to boost output after the pandemic continues to halt major industries and force people to stay home. U.S. lawmakers are currently working to secure a further package of economic relief, and investors are concerned that stimulus packages will trigger inflation and devalue other assets. Meanwhile, escalating tensions between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S. and China, is likely to keep pushing gold upwards.



<h2>WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



Gold’s impressive rally could well continue, analysts predict, as the pandemic shows little sign of slowing down, allowing battered industries to reopen and letting global economies recover. More than 18 million people have been infected so far, while the death toll topped 700,000 this week.



By Isabel Togoh, Forbes Staff

Is The Golden Bubble About To Burst?

Here’s Why Gold Has Topped $2,000 For The First Time

<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="590" height="393" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SG-Afganistan.2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-45096" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SG-Afganistan.2.jpg 590w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SG-Afganistan.2-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px" /><figcaption>UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls on President Ashraf Ghani during a visit to Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to show solidarity with the Afghan people. Photo UNAMA / Fardin Waezi/June 2017.</figcaption></figure></div>



The world commemorated the 75th Anniversary to mark the end of the 2nd World War also called VE Day on May 08, 2020. 



With her nation, and much of the world still in lockdown, due to COVID 19, England’s Queen marked 75 years since the allied victory in Europe with a poignant televised address. From Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth said, “ the wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.



But the world is still at war. Proxy wars or localised conflicts are wrecking havoc on human development and humanity in virtually every corner of the world. By the end of 2018, <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2019/6/5d08b6614/global-forced-displacement-tops-70-million.html">wars, violence and persecution have driven record numbers of over 70 million people</a> from their homes worldwide, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. This is the largest ever displacement of humanity, post 2nd World War.



Never has the appeal by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres been more pertinent: “<a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2017/09/repair-world-in-pieces-and-create-world-at-peace-un-chief-guterres-urges-global-leaders/">The world is in pieces; we need world peace</a>.”&nbsp;



The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/world/asia/us-taliban-deal.html">United States signed a historic deal with Afghanistan</a> that outlines a timetable and exit plan for American troops, setting the stage for the potential end to nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan.  The UN Secretary General <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1058371">welcomed the US-Taliban peace agreement</a> on February 29, 2020.  The United States also won the<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059161"> unanimous backing of the UN Security Council</a> to this ambitious peace deal on March 10, 2020.



The implementation of the peace agreement will need leadership, courage and resolve and there will be spoilers who will attempt to upend the peace process. The road to peace will be characterized by violence, set-backs and numerous false starts, but it will need diplomacy, determination and drive to keep the peace process on track. 



Hubris must not prolong the agony of this appalling war. 



The war has cost over $2 trillion and killed more than&nbsp;<a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Human%20Costs%2C%20Nov%208%202018%20CoW.pdf">2,400 American soldiers and&nbsp;</a><a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Human%20Costs,%20Nov%208%202018%20CoW.pdf">38,000</a><a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Human%20Costs%2C%20Nov%208%202018%20CoW.pdf">&nbsp;Afghan civilians</a>. Casualties among Afghan security forces are estimated to have reached around 40,000 between 2007 and 2017.



Wars are appalling. As a combat veteran,&nbsp;<a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20161101105441-eli9d/">I have witnessed first-hand how armed conflicts</a>&nbsp;have transformed some of our finest soldiers into shells of the people I once knew. Combat is savage, it is brutal, it is reckless, it diminishes us as human beings and jeopardizes our humanity.



General William Sherman once said, “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. War is hell.”



There are no winners in Afghanistan, but let’s consider the consequences on all the women and men who fought in it.



Today, research backs up what soldiers have described for decades, and what was once called shell shock or combat fatigue. We have terms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), chronic depression, cognitive impairment, and traumatic brain injury to help explain the symptoms suffered by active and returning soldiers.  



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="700" height="467" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/US-Army-soldiers-security-duty-province-Paktika-2010.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-45062" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/US-Army-soldiers-security-duty-province-Paktika-2010.jpg 700w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/US-Army-soldiers-security-duty-province-Paktika-2010-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/US-Army-soldiers-security-duty-province-Paktika-2010-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /><figcaption>U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010. Sgt. Derec Pierson/U.S. Department of Defense</figcaption></figure></div>



For a long time, many of the grim statistics about war centred on fatalities and did not include the conflicts’ deep mental wounds. Today we have a better understanding of the kind of moral and psychological toll wars take on soldiers, their families, and communities.



The United States is a leader in the understanding of psychological and emotional damage to soldiers and has taken some steps to address their mental health. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left between&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp">11% and 20%</a>&nbsp;of military personnel suffering from PTSD. As many as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dav.org/veterans/resources/traumatic-brain-injury-tbi/">375,000 US veterans</a>&nbsp;have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2017, mostly caused by explosions.&nbsp;



But suicides in the&nbsp;US armed forces have continued to rise in recent years, reaching&nbsp;<a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/09/26/military-suicide-rates-hit-record-high-2018.html">record levels in 2018</a>&nbsp;when there were 25 deaths per 100,000 service members. Former defence secretary Leon Panetta once said that the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/opinion/sunday/war-wounds.html">epidemic” of military suicide</a>&nbsp;was “one of the most frustrating problems” he had faced.



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/09/world/middleeast/afghanistan-war-cost.html">More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans</a>&nbsp;of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.



Homelessness among veterans is pervasive, and soldiers still struggle to access benefits and healthcare if they suffer from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/opinion/sunday/war-wounds.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=2&amp;">mental health</a>&nbsp;issues rather than from physical wounds. At any given time in the US, more than 40,000 veterans are homeless, constituting around&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/Homelessness_in_America._Focus_on_Veterans.pdf">9% of all homeless adults</a>&nbsp;in the country.&nbsp;



In the United Kingdom, spurred by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-veteran-soldiers-afghanistan-suicides-deaths-a9367856.html">a dozen suicides</a>&nbsp;among Afghan war veterans in just two months, the government expedited new mental health programs to help deal with former military members’ PTSD and addiction.&nbsp;



What does this now mean for the Afghan security forces? They and their families do not have the same support structures.



All this ‘hell’, but to what end? Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. Since 2004 alone, more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.giz.de/en/ourservices/55909.html">1.8 million Afghans have become internally displaced.</a>&nbsp;Afghanistan’s&nbsp;human development and progress has been set back by decades.&nbsp;Women and children have suffered the most and countless are emotionally and psychologically scarred for life.



While we like to see soldiers as stoic and heroic, we must open our eyes to the fact that wars scar minds as well as bodies, often in ways medical science cannot yet comprehend.



Just like the world is desperately seeking a cure to end the coronavirus pandemic which has killed over 275,000 people so far and leaving a trail of human, economic and social misery, the world too must find a way to end wars, or else we may be defeated as a civilization.



Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya. He has served with the UN and the Red Cross Movement in various parts of the world affected by conflicts and humanitarian crisis. He is also a decorated Special Forces veteran and a Princeton University alumnus. Follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/sidchat1?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">@sidchat1</a>



The views expressed in this article are the author&#8217;s own.​​​​​

VE DAY MARKS THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR-BUT THE WORLD IS STILL AT WAR

It was another record year for the wealthiest people in America, as the price of admission to the country’s most exclusive club jumped nearly 18%. The minimum net worth to make The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans is now a record $2 billion, up from $1.7 billion a year ago. The group’s total net worth climbed to $2.7 trillion, up from $2.4 trillion, and the average net worth rose to $6.7 billion, up from $6 billion.
Even at these new heights, entrepreneurs are breaking into the ranks for the first time as they mint fortunes in everything from telecom to booze to fishing. There were 22 newcomers, 14 of whom are self-made entrepreneurs. Among the most notable: Arizona iced tea cofounder Don Vultaggio; Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings; Tito Beveridge, the creator of Tito’s Handmade Vodka; Chuck Bundrant, whose Trident Seafoods sells his fish to places like McDonald’s and Burger King; and Rocco Commisso, founder of cable TV and broadband firm Mediacom and owner of the New York Cosmos, a soccer club based in Brooklyn.
Every person in the top 10 got at least $1 billion richer in the past year.  Number one for the 24th consecutive year is Bill Gates, who is now worth $89 billion, up $8 billion from a year ago. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose fortune rose $14.5 billion in a year, retains the number two spot for the second consecutive year with a net worth of $81.5 billion, while Warren Buffett holds onto the number 3 spot. His net worth increased by $12.5 billion, despite giving away more than $3 billion of Berkshire-Hathaway stock in July. The biggest gainer (in dollar terms) is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. His fortune jumped $15.5 billion, but in a crazy year like this one, it’s only good enough for him to hold onto his ranking as fourth richest.
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/#version:static" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Richest People in America List</a>
Gainers (there were 289) since last year’s list outnumbered losers (just 51) by more than five to one.  A strong stock market was the main reason for this record-breaking year. The S&amp;P 500, for instance, was up roughly 17% in the 12 months since the 2016 Forbes 400 list.
The most notable loser was President Donald Trump, whose fortune fell $600 million to $3.1 billion. A tough New York real estate market, particularly for retail locations; a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign all contributed to the declining fortune of the 45th president.
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/10/18/donald-trumps-fortune-fell-600-million-one-year/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: How Donald Trump&#8217;s Fortune Fell $600 Million In One Year</a>
A record 169 billionaires were too poor to make the cut, including well-known figures such as activist investor Nelson Peltz and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. Twenty-six members of the 2016 class fell out of the ranks. Among the most notable dropouts is Under Armour’s Kevin Plank, whose fortune fell to $1.7 billion, down from $3 billion, as the stock price of his sports apparel company unraveled by 60%. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also fell out of the ranks, after filing disclosure forms showing a net worth of less than $1 billion. He told Forbes that he shifted billions to trusts for his family members, but did not provide evidence of having done so.
Our estimates are a snapshot of the fortunes of America’s wealthiest people using stock prices from September 22. Some of The Forbes 400 become richer or poorer within weeks, even days, of publication. We track these changes at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">forbes.com/forbes-400</a>. That&#8217;s where you&#8217;ll find more information on list members, as well as photos, videos, and coverage of these influential billionaires.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/richlist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LIST: Africa&#8217;s Billionaires</a>
Methodology: This is the 36th year of the flagship Forbes 400. Though we’ve been at it a long time, it’s always a challenge. Our reporters dig deep. This year we started with a list of more than 600 individuals considered strong candidates. When possible, we met with Forbes 400 members and candidates in person or spoke with them by phone. We also interviewed their employees, handlers, rivals, peers and attorneys. Uncovering their fortunes required us to pore over thousands of SEC documents, court records, probate records and web and print stories. We took into account all types of assets: stakes in public and private companies, real estate, art, yachts, planes, ranches, vineyards, jewelry, car collections and more.
We factored in debt. Of course, we don’t pretend to know what is listed on each billionaire’s private balance sheet, although some candidates did provide paperwork to that effect. Some billionaires presiding over private companies were happy to share their financial figures, but others were less forthcoming. To value the private businesses, we couple revenue or profit estimates with prevailing price-to-revenue or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies.
We didn’t include dispersed family fortunes. We did include wealth belonging to a member’s immediate relatives if the wealth could be traced to a single living person. In that case you’ll see “&amp; family.” We also include married couples who built fortunes and businesses together. In those instances, we list both names. The Forbes 400 is a list of American citizens who own assets in the U.S. &#8211; Written by By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/#4a466b153523" target="_self">Kerry A. Dolan</a> and Luisa Kroll, FORBES STAFF

Forbes 400 2017: Meet The Richest People In America

Africa’s leaders, along with everyone else interested in US-Africa relations, have waited eight months for US President Donald Trump’s administration to explain its Africa policy. We aren’t there yet.
But in recent weeks Trump has indicated the level and extent of his interest. And, senior African affairs officials at the State and Defence Departments are at last attempting publicly to outline US goals and objectives toward Africa. This, apparently without much guidance from their president.
Trump’s inaugural address to the UN General Assembly said little about Africa – barely one paragraph <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/09/19/remarks-president-trump-72nd-session-united-nations-general-assembly" target="_blank" rel="noopener">towards the end</a>. One sentence praised African Union and UN-led peacekeeping missions for “invaluable contributions in stabilising conflicts in Africa.” A second praised America, which
<blockquote>continues to lead the world in humanitarian assistance, including famine prevention and relief in South Sudan, Somalia and northern Nigeria and Yemen.</blockquote>
The next day Trump hosted a luncheon for leaders of nine African countries – Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, and South Africa. Only his welcoming remarks have been published but they are nearly devoid of <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/09/20/remarks-president-trump-working-lunch-african-leaders" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policy content or guidance</a>. His opening gambit reminded me of a 19th century colonialist hoping to become rich, as he proclaimed:
<blockquote>Africa has tremendous business potential, I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich. I congratulate you, they’re spending a lot of money….It’s really become a place they have to go, that they want to go.</blockquote>
Trump called on African companies to invest in the US. Then, shifting to security cooperation, he urged Africans to help defeat Islamist extremists and the threat from North Korea.
The American president proposed no new presidential initiatives for Africa. But, at least, he did not say those launched by predecessors were a waste of money and would be ended. Nor did he mention opposition to foreign assistance generally. He also did not mention his renunciation of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2017/jun/01/donald-trump-paris-climate-agreement-live-news" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paris Climate Accord</a> and refusal to fund <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/why-trump-seeing-red-about-green-climate-fund-n767351" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Green Climate Fund</a>. Both are crucial for Africa’s adaptation to global warming.
A “US-Africa Partnerships” conference at the <a href="https://www.sfcg.org/events-schedule/2016-09-13/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Institute for Peace</a> in Washington in mid-September provided additional clues to how this administration will conduct Africa policy.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Tom Shannon, offered the first high level <a href="https://www.state.gov/plus/rem/2017/274073.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">official statement on Africa</a>. Shannon, a highly accomplished Foreign Service officer, emphasised policy continuity. But, he implicitly affirmed Trump’s apparent desire for minimal engagement in Africa.
Shannon and Acting Assistant Secretary Donald Yamamoto at a later session, stressed the <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201709180753.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">four main pillars</a> that have framed Africa policy for many years, would remain. These are:
<ul>
<li>peace and security;</li>
<li>counterterrorism;</li>
<li>economic trade, investment and development; and,</li>
<li>democracy and good governance.</li>
</ul>
They endorsed previous presidential initiatives, including specific references to former US President Barack Obama’s <a href="https://www.feedthefuture.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Feed the Future</a>, <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/powerafrica/aboutus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Power Africa</a> and the Young African <a href="https://yali.state.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Leaders Initiative</a>. Their continuation, and at what levels, will depend on budget decisions. Trump’s initial recommendations, endorsed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, call for crippling cuts.
So far, the only new social development program that Trump has endorsed is the World Bank’s global Women Entrepreneurs <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/women-entrepreneurs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Finance Initiative</a>, championed by his daughter Ivanka. The US has donated $50 million toward its global start-up budget of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/07/08/ivanka-trump-and-40-million-for-women-entrepreneurs-nice-idea-but-trivially-unimportant/#757bef521af2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$315 million</a>. As Yamamoto noted at the September meeting, Africa could benefit from this initiative.
Trump will be less likely to challenge US military’s commitments in Africa. With this in mind I paid close attention to the <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201709140684.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">address</a> by General Thomas Waldhauser, Commander of the US Africa Command (Africom) at the September 13 meeting. He set out Africom’s current engagements in Libya and Somalia, where he said the mission was to support locally engineered political solutions.
Critics of America’s many previous failed interventions in these two countries and elsewhere, will rightly remain sceptical.
The second part of his address dealt more broadly with Africom’s capacity building assistance, nationally and regionally. He said Africom only operates where
<blockquote>US and partner nation strategic objectives are compatible and aligned and, second, the operations are conducted primarily by partner nation forces with the US in a supporting role.</blockquote>
Africom, he said, conducts “some 3,500 exercises, programs and engagements” annually, with “5-to-6,000 US service members working on the continent every day.”
Waldenhauser ended his address with a surprisingly specific and positive view on China’s role in Africa. He praised China’s assistance to building much needed infrastructure throughout Africa and for the rapid growth in China-Africa trade which exceeded $300 billion in 2016.
On security issues, he commended Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pledge of <a href="http://uhuruspirit.org/news/?x=8706#.WdIYnVuCw9c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$100 million</a> to the AU and for supporting UN peacekeeping missions with 8,000 police officers. He then referred to the construction of China’s first overseas military base, which is near the US base in Djibouti, as creating “opportunities found nowhere else in the world,” relating that:
<blockquote>China assigned the first soldiers to this base and expressed interest in conducting amphibious training between Chinese and US Marines. Across the continent, we have shared interests in African stability. We see many areas where we can cooperate with the Chinese military. For example, we both support UN peacekeeping missions and training with African defence forces. The fact that we have mutual interests in Africa means that we can and should cooperate.</blockquote>
To emphasise the importance of this comment he quoted Secretary of Defence James Mattis when he pointed out earlier this year:
<blockquote>Our two countries can and do cooperate for mutual benefit. And we will pledge to work closely with China where we share common cause.</blockquote>
But China-US security cooperation in Africa can’t succeed without the inclusion of African governments as equal partners in this “common cause”.
Such “win-win-win” experiments in mutual confidence building would not only benefit Africans, but could also serve as positive examples for other regions and could improve US-China relations globally. In the absence of a coherent and compelling US – Africa policy, this at least is one positive development that merits our attention. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-j-stremlau-182813" target="_blank" rel="author noopener">John J Stremlau</a>, 2017 Bradlow Fellow at SA Institute of International Affairs,Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>
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Trump’s Africa policy is still incoherent, but key signals are emerging

Regardless of whether Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States (US) or not, women are slowly but steadily taking up political power.
The numbers of women leaders are still relatively low – only one-tenth of all leaders of the United Nation’s 193 member states are women and Clinton would be only the 19th female to currently govern her country. Research shows that over 60 of 142 countries have had women leaders at some point over the past 50 years, although most have held power for less than four years. Recent figures from UN Women also show that only 17% of government ministers are women, with most of their portfolios relating to social issues. And only two countries have a female majority in Parliament – Rwanda and Bolivia – although many countries have reached the one-third mark.
Clearly, there is still a long way to go. But here in the US, findings by the Pew Research Centre show that most women believe that whether Clinton achieves her second run for the presidency or not, a woman will be president at some point in their lifetime. According to one CNN poll, eight of 10 Americans think the country is ready for a woman president, but only one third think it’s a priority. Younger American women, it seems, take for granted the growing role of women in positions of power – both in government and business.
Among Clinton’s many detractors are those who would like to see a woman president but don’t necessarily believe she is the right woman for the job. Others are more appreciative of how much has changed since women first got the vote in 1920 (black women from the South faced voting hurdles until the 1960s), and are impatient to see Clinton in the White House as another important milestone on the path towards gender equality.
“When any barrier falls in America, it clears the way for everyone,” Clinton said when accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Philadelphia in July. A woman in the White House, she said, would be “another step in our journey as a nation”. She also said that her election would give “other women and girls the hope that, whatever their goals, they can achieve them in this country”.
Some political observers believe that when Barack Obama felled the race barrier by becoming the first black president of the US in 2008, the sense of urgency around getting rid of the gender barrier by appointing a woman president dissipated. Clinton has also struggled to overcome deep unpopularity among many voters – both men and women. Her alliance with big business has left many working class voters feeling that she does not have their best interests at heart.
That said, the blatant sexism shown by her rival, Republican nominee Donald Trump, has shined a bright light on the status of women in the country.
When Trump accused Clinton of playing the “woman card”, her quick online reply was seen as a boost for her campaign.
“If fighting for women’s healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman card’, then deal me in,” she said. In no time, a plastic “support Clinton woman card” became another must-have accessory for her supporters.
Trump’s glamorous daughter Ivanka, a powerful businesswoman in her own right, has tried to cast her father’s macho politics in a more woman-friendly light. When she introduced him at the Republican convention in Cleveland, also in July, she listed a host of Democratic-sounding, pro-women policies on childcare and family leave that she said her father would introduce, even though none of these policies are on the Republican agenda.
Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, similarly, has tried to show Clinton’s softer, more human side, describing her as her “wonderful, kind, thoughtful, hilarious mother” when she introduced her at the Democratic convention.
The friendship between Ivanka and Chelsea is much in the media spotlight. Both are powerful, accomplished young women who have made the most of their highly privileged backgrounds. Despite a bitterly-fought election campaign and the obvious rancor between their parents, their friendship supposedly endures. “I’m not running for public office, and neither is she, so of course we’re still friends,” Ivanka said in one interview.
Ivanka is vice president of her father’s real estate empire, the Trump Organization, and Chelsea is vice chair of the multi-million dollar Clinton Foundation. One of them will play a pivotal role in the new presidency. And, whatever the election outcome, both these young mothers are likely to be highly-influential individuals – whether in business or politics – in the years to come. The same could apply to Obama’s two young girls, Malia and Sasha, who will come of age in an era where race and gender won’t be the obstacles they once were.
Elsewhere in the world, progress on narrowing the gender gap in political leadership is being made. Women are at the helm in powerful countries like Germany and the United Kingdom. Although none of the frontrunners for the next United Nations Secretary General are women, it is still possible that a female could land the top diplomatic post. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who is head of the world’s largest humanitarian agency, the UN Development Program, is a formidable leader who has her hat in the ring.
At the recent Social Good Summit in New York, Clark discussed the role of women in political power with another former woman president, Malawi’s Joyce Banda. Speaking to Barkha Dutt, an award-winning Indian television journalist, the two former state leaders shared their wisdom and advice for other women eying political office. They pointed out that many other countries have made more progress than the US in this regard, with Dutt reminding the audience that in Asian countries like India and Bangladesh women, have held office for years.
Clark, who campaigned in a climate where bumper stickers like “Ditch the Bitch” prevailed, said women in pursuit of political leadership had to brace themselves for many obstacles.
“Don’t accept people are going to roll out the red carpet for you. You have to roll out the red carpet yourself and kick the door down.”
Clark said women had to “turn a deaf ear to all the frankly misogynist things that are said about you. Everyone will have an opinion on how you look, how you dress, whether your teeth are crooked. You just have to look straight ahead, put your earplugs in and say I believe I can do this,” Clark said. On the UN Secretary General position she said she believed she had the right profile for the job. “So I’m standing my ground and saying I’m available.”
Banda, who walked out of an abusive marriage before becoming a leading politician and president of Malawi from 2012-14, said she did so at a time “when you didn’t walk out – especially in Africa”. Banda said she strongly believed that more African women had to become leaders. “Number one, because we have been leaders before. If you look into the history of the world before colonization we were already queens and leaders; we were leading our nations,” she told the audience. She also said it was crucial to support other women in their pursuit of top political jobs and not “dropping the ladder once we’ve arrived”, as former South African First Lady Zanele Mbeki once put it.
While Dutt wondered why so many successful women seem to feel the need to apologize for their ambition, Banda said she believed African women could benefit from a softer, more diplomatic approach or they would lose the battle before it had even begun. “Do I want to be shouting and antagonizing the people who need to open the way for me? That is the decision that we African women have to make.”
Banda, who herself lobbied for gay rights, recalled the time in 1995 when Clinton said that “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights”. At the time, Banda said she thought Clinton was “out of her mind”.
“I didn’t think I would see in my lifetime a time when everyone would accept that women’s rights are human rights”, but Clinton was right ahead of her time, and that time has arrived.

shutterstock_490441729-Gregory-Reed-Shutterstock.com-

From  The White House To The World

While on my first late Monday morning subway ride, from 34th Street to 125th Street in Harlem, New York, it felt like I was traveling from Soweto to Park Station in Johannesburg, with a few notable exceptions.
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Just like back home, the coach was jam-packed, but there were no young men train surfing and the construction workers wore clean and bright work suits, without the odor that comes with long hours and back-breaking work. Some passengers jammed to music coming from their headphones; the dapper executives were fixated on their iPads held in one hand while the other grasped the overhead rails. Initially, feeling slightly paranoid, I was vigilant and clung to my valuables. After a while, I loosened up as I realized how chilled my fellow passengers were.
Amid the frantic activity of New York, I was flooded with memories of Johannesburg as three African women sat opposite me. The women, each of them hawkers, had two oversized plastic bags between their legs. They wore identical black headscarves and matching flat shoes. Taking no notice of the commuters squeezed around them, the women chatted and passed kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian interwoven material, among themselves. Kente has become an integral part of African-American graduation attire.
While a handful of passengers were annoyed, the hustle of the hawkers, and the ‘gibberish’ coming from their tongues, left the rest amazed. I came to realize that the women left their village in Africa for the dream of a better life in the land of the free. Not a word of English was used in their conversation, but they know the basics of the language to make ends meet. I have met many other African foreigners like them who told me they learned English in the United States (US).
Soon after, I stumbled upon a 10-foot bronze statue of Harriet Tubman, the African American anti-slavery activist. Like the hawkers on the train, Tubman’s head was covered with a head wrap. Unlike the hawkers, Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland around 1820. In her late 20s, Tubman, along with her two brothers escaped the plantations; her brothers got cold feet and returned, leaving her to flee to the free state of Pennsylvania alone.
Later on, Tubman returned to Maryland to free slaves with the help of other freed African Americans. She carried out her mission armed with a shotgun. She never fired the gun because nobody tried to stop her. For her work, Tubman was called ‘Moses’ by her people.
Once slavery was abolished, Tubman joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The former slaves took African Methodism across the Atlantic to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later southern Africa.
Tubman’s statue, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, overlooks an array of African restaurants in an area dubbed ‘Small Africa’. The owner of one of these eateries, Patisserie des Ambassades, is Gorgui N’doye. This Senegalese engineer opened the first restaurant in the south Harlem 16 years ago, with less than 10 employees. Today, Patisserie des Ambassades has 50 staff and opens for 20 hours every day.
N’doye started the restaurant in 2001 when Harlem was notorious for being a gangster’s paradise. The area underwent gentrification in 2005 and business started to boom.
N’doye has since returned to Senegal where has expanded his business to exporting peanuts to Asia and South Africa. In his absence, Patisserie des Ambassades is managed by another Senegalese, Ahmadou Ndiaye Jean.
Harlem’s facelift, however, hasn’t benefited everyone. Eric Fraska, a 31-year-old Liberian financier at MoneyGram in New York, laments the displacement of black folk due to the rising cost of living in the area.
Fraska came to the US as a 20-year-old to study. Over the years, he witnessed a lot of change. Like Ndoye, Fraska is saving money to start a business in Africa. He says he’s certainly going back.
“My education and skills are no longer needed here. There’s nothing more to do here. Africa is the future,” Fraska says over a frothing cappuccino.
I have no doubt the next time I catch up with Fraska will be in either Johannesburg or Monrovia.

‘There’s Nothing More To Do Here.  Africa Is The Future’

During my first weeks in the United States (US), far from Africa; tension gripped a dimmed hall, as did a compelling voice narrating the chilling events of World War 1 more than a century ago. The war raged for more than four years, killing 17 million people and leaving millions more injured and bereaved.
Today, young and old, can sit on a bench and look down at a trench which has a group of soldiers walking in a line through the mud. A warplane soars over the exhausted soldiers. This is an astonishing reenactment of the Great War. It is one of the breathtaking sections of the 48-acre National World War 1 Museum and Memorial in Kansas City in Missouri State.
Since 1920, the National World War 1 Museum and Memorial, previously called the Liberty Memorial Museum, collected artefacts and documents from around the world. With about 75,000 items – ranging from a British soldier’s belt to a huge aircraft – the museum, in partnership with the Edward Jones Research Center, is home to one of the world’s largest Great War collection. This is how obsessed the Americans are about the war; despite the fact the country sent troops to the bloody trenches only in June 1917, nearly three years after the first shot was fired.
One would think the US alone won the war against Germany. They didn&#8217;t, the allies did – including hundreds of thousands of troops from a score of African nations.
Regardless, the grandstanding illusion stands. At the very least, the experience made some sense to the convoluted verses of outstanding poets, TS Eliot and Seamus Heaney, that I struggled to decipher two decades ago.
A short drive away there is life and style in the shape of the American Jazz Museum, that also houses the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. This is a world away from the gore of war.
Jazz legend Charlie Parker, known as ‘Bird’, grew up in this neighborhood. His huge portrait hangs over the entrance and his Grafton saxophone is here. There are many relics to rave about here, but we shall keep it tight: Ella Fitzgerald’s passé sequined gown and matching glasses; Louis Armstrong’s booth with the cover of TIME magazine, priced 20c, dated February 21, 1949. It is a cool portrait of the young Armstrong with eyes cast skywards; a golden crown made of six trumpets rests on his head. Armstrong was the first jazz musician to make the cover of TIME; quite right too.
Then there’s Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue around the corner on Brooklyn Avenue. They say it’s the first grilled meat shop in the US. It dates back to 1908 and its first owner was Henry Perry. The Bryant brothers, Charlie and Arthur, worked for Perry. When the founder died, in 1940, it was up to the brothers to run it and they named it after Arthur. The name stuck, despite ownership changes.
I couldn’t fathom why Arthur Bryant’s is still in business. For over five minutes, tables were heaped with fries, left-overs and leaked barbecue sauces that could drive your appetite out of the window. So, I cast my eye to the wall-of-fame.
Years before Barack Obama, the one who thinks Africans should be grateful for US toxic chicken, was elected as president of the United States, he dined here and took photographs with the staff. So did director Steven Spielberg, actors Danny Glover and Harrison Ford, and Republicans Sarah Palin and John McCain. Anyway, I still prefer my Stellenbosch braai back home to the dry ribs I had. Their famous sauces saved the day.
Phew! A day’s excursion to Kansas was a welcome break from a year’s study, squeezed into two weeks, for this journalist. Back in Columbia, my host city, after a two-hour drive, a New York band called The Wood Brothers was playing at the Blue Note bar. Forty dollars got my Turkish fellow, Gokce Aytulu, and I in and the drinks weren’t too bad for $6 a jug. For the first time in my life, I stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowd of 100 or so whites who found my accent akin to gibberish.
As they say, music is a universal language – who cared about being understood when The Wood Brothers were slaying it?

The American Shock

When he was selected to travel to the United States (US) to take part in the second edition of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI), otherwise known as The Mandela Washington Fellowship, Jean Bosco Nzeyimana knew that the sky was the limit for him.
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Last year, US President Barack Obama’s Mandela Washington Fellowship invited 500 of Africa’s brightest minds to learn new skills and see innovative entrepreneurial trends. For Nzeyimana it was invaluable.
Having grown up in the rural village of Gikongoro, in the Nyamagabe District of Rwanda’s Southern Province, from parents of humble origins, Nzeyimana’s journey to the top was out of the ordinary; especially when you consider he used trash to get there. Garbage is Nzeyimana’s calling.
In August last year, Nzeyimana met Obama, and other US state department officials, in Washington DC immediately after the US president visited Kenya to host the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi.
A few months later, Nzeyimana presented his business ideas at St James’s Palace, in London, at an African business event called Pitch@Palace in the presence of Prince Andrew. This event, which Nzeyimana says changed his perspective on green business, takes place twice a year and involves more than 300 CEOs, angel investors, mentors and the event’s business partners.
Nzeyimana became an entrepreneur in challenging circumstances. His neighborhood was gripped by poverty and poor sanitation bedevilled the community.
Firewood was used to cook every day. This was problematic as finding wood was daunting and burning it led to health problems. Nzeyimana felt a need to do something about it.
“I needed to be part of a sustainable solution to address lack of power and affordable sanitation and to fight poverty at my rural village in Kitabi, in Gikongoro. My solution was to try composting trash into cleaner cooking fuel and, if possible, to produce other green products too,” he says.
This led to Nzeyimana starting Habona Ltd, a company that produces 20 tons of briquettes per month, in 2013. He did when he was barely 18 and still studying at the University of Rwanda’s College of Business and Economics. Habona currently employs more than 100 people.
“I studied business administration because I needed to lead a private enterprise that could solve myriad problems that my folks faced, especially hygiene and lack of fuel,” says Nzeyimana.
While at college, he researched how waste could be turned into green products, such as biogas, compost or briquettes. He was particularly interested in new approaches that could displace firewood or help his parents access cleaner and cheaper fuels during the rainy season, when access to firewood – the primary source of cooking – was more difficult.
With time, the knowledge he acquired from university helped him to draw up a comprehensive business plan for his project.
With barely any capital, Nzeyimana formed a small team to set up waste collection points in Nyamagabe town. The team gathered waste from people’s homes and hired vehicles to transport them to a central processing point.
Here the waste is categorized and the degradable materials are processed into manure, briquettes and biogas, while the non-degradable are turned into ornaments or sold for further recycling.
“You don’t need money to start off successfully,” he says. “A lack of funds did not discourage us in any way. Instead we needed to think out of the box in order to raise capital to enable our idea to take shape.”
When the African Innovation Prize, a continental business competition for start-ups called for entries in 2014, Nzeyimana entered and won, receiving Rwf2 million ($2,700) in valuable capital for Habona.
Nzeyimana also scooped the 2014 Young Innovator Award in Rwanda and was among 10 Africans who participated in training in New Delhi, India, on running a start-up.
By August last year, while attending the YALI fellowship, Habona was granted around $25,000 from the United States African Development Foundation(USADF)  to support Nzeyimana’s waste project.
“The grant will boost our capacity substantially going forward. We intend to employ 10 more workers and increase our briquette making capacity from 20 tons to 50 tons per month,” he says.
Habona sells a kilogram of briquettes for Rwf200 (around $0.30) to people fighting the vicious circle of poverty in Nzeyimana’s rural village.
“There is more value in that the briquettes last three times longer than charcoal of the same cost. This is not only cost effective, but is environmentally sustainable.”
Nzeyimana’s experiences in the US and Britain have led to bigger and bolder ideas.
Since his fellowship in the US, Habona has scaled up its capacity in renewable energy management. Consequently, the company was contracted to run an integrated waste management plant owned by the Nyamagabe District authorities.
At St James’s Palace, Nzeyimana learned to introduce a broader vision of his business.
“I came back charged and armed with a better vision of the potential of my abilities, including where I want to be by the end of 2016.”
The event opened his eyes to the big world of green business.
“I am in the process of setting up an office in Kigali. As an entrepreneur, it is important to spread my wings. My company is in talks with a group of local, regional and international investors to set up something with the same business model, but very huge in Kigali while expanding our operations in Nyamagabe.”
Support for Habona is flooding in.
Nyamagabe District’s Deputy Mayor for Finance and Economic Development, Immaculée Mukarwego, is a firm supporter of the company.
“The project started by Habona Ltd is very good, with a very bright future as it seeks to deal with the issue of waste in a sustainable manner and, in the process, it has a high potential of improving the overall wellbeing of the entire district,” says Mukarwego.
As part of the district’s long-term plans, a plant and dumping post was built at a cost of more than $500,000 to help Habona to increase its activities.
It’s a good start for a rural village boy who started off with nothing but an ambitious dream to fight poverty.

One Man’s Trash  Is Another Man’s  Treasure

In my travels, I have come to understand that as women of African descent, whether you are in England, Brazil, St. Maarten, South Africa or in the United States, we face many of the same challenges. Most of us are dealing with unrealistic European standards of beauty imposed upon us from the time we are born. This, combined with the expectations of our parents and community, leaves us feeling like we always have something to prove.
This used to be me. Born in Uganda, my upbringing as an African in America shaped my sense of identity and self-worth. My ‘Africanness’ in a world where light skin and long, straight hair were preferred, was almost taboo.
In elementary school, I detested my first name, Julian, because in America, it was considered a boy’s name. To add what I thought was insult to injury, my last name, Kiganda, was extremely difficult for Americans to pronounce. So it was butchered often. Because my mother kept mine and my four sisters’ hair short, I was asked more than once by students at school if I was a boy or a girl. Beauty and success to me were not synonymous with being African.
Two major turning points in my life happened to flip this erroneous belief on its head. The first was the opportunity to travel the United States (US) as a member of an all-women’s East African performing arts group called Kayaga of Africa. Showcasing our culture on stages where many in the audience still had a very backward view of Africa was both empowering and life-changing. As American audiences showed appreciation for the beauty and diversity of my culture, so did I.
But I still struggled to reconcile who I was to who I thought I was supposed to be. Then in 2006, my firm won a bid to design an African American slavery museum in Alexandria, Virginia, US. It was a project which would completely change my perspective of African Americans. In public school, very little is taught about slavery or African American history in general. So my real introduction to black history came as a result of designing this museum.
I began to understand how Africans were forced to give up their languages, their identities, and their names to take on that of their white slave owners. The atrocities Africans in America suffered were indescribable. That’s when I began to understand my role in bridging the divide between Africa and her diaspora.
Since designing that museum, my work as an artist, author, community activist, teacher and entrepreneur has revolved around bridging the two cultures which have played integral roles in shaping who I am today: a black woman who is proud of my African roots, and comfortable defining beauty and success for myself. I use every opportunity I can to educate my brothers and sisters on both sides of the Atlantic on the fact that we are more alike than we are different: history and current circumstances speak to that.
As an old African proverb states: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, gotogether.”
We need to build bridges that will bring greater collaboration, cultural exchange and opportunity. I believe women play a key role in building those bridges. Thankfully, I’m not the only one.
On a recent trip to Johannesburg in South Africa, while being driven around the city by a Malawian Uber driver, I asked him what he thought of Joyce Banda, his country&#8217;s immediate past president and second female head of state in Africa. His answer pleasantly surprised me:
“I think she did a good job. We would have a better world if we had more women as presidents. There is something that God put in women which we men don’t have. Women are multi-taskers and considerate. If you think about it, we live in the wombs of our mothers for nine months. If they can take care of an entire family, they can take care of an entire country.”
You may not aspire to be the next president of your country, but as a woman, you are uniquely equipped to succeed. Just remember, part of your success depends on your willingness to accept and embrace who you are: in all your Africanness. Understand your true value. Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. Instead, blaze your own trail and define success for yourself.
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– The writer is based in Washington DC and is founder and CEO of Bold &amp; Fearless, a lifestyle brand and online magazine for professional women of Africa and the diaspora.

Julian-B-Kiganda-etch-1

Bridging  The Divide  As An African In America

The relationship between an athlete and a coach can be complicated. It involves a personal bond but on a professional basis. Everything we’ve been told about mixing business and pleasure goes out the window. It requires responsibility from both sides and takes time to develop. Throughout my sporting career, I have had a close relationship with my coaches but there was a time when I regretted rushing into it.
I moved to Europe from the United States to join a new coach, one who I had only met on a few occasions. I was taken by the advice he offered me during a competition. I was already a successful swimmer and had the medals to show for it, but to remain successful, I needed something to change. So, when presented with his subsequent proposal and promise, I grabbed what I thought was an exciting opportunity.
Two weeks later, I realized I had not done my homework. The situation I had got myself into was not what I had expected. I was an elite athlete with three Olympic Games behind me, seven Olympic medals, multiple world records and my new coach was a junior level club coach with little international experience. I found it difficult to communicate with both him and his ego. Ego can be confused with confidence; it will stunt your growth because you fail to listen to others. This became a detriment to our partnership.
I tried making it work by following his program and quietly focusing on my individual desperation to succeed. It was too late and I started feeling what I had only ever seen others endure. For the first time, a lack of confidence had become my problem. As my confidence continued to cascade, so too did my passion in swimming. I was no longer swimming for the enjoyment of the sport; I was swimming because I thought I had nothing else. Perhaps change was not what I was after. The tipping point came during a competition when my coach’s temper burst into a dramatic fit of tantrums, in front of all the other athletes and coaches. My embarrassment and anger at him, and at myself for letting this happen, gave me the courage I needed to finally make the right decision.
Within a day, I had moved countries and flown back to my coaches in the United States. Now I knew what I wanted and I was anxious to get my confidence back. I had trained under Kim Brackin and David Marsh for a long time and we share a good relationship because they know me as a person, not just an athlete. This is essential for understanding what can affect an athlete outside of sport because of the impact it can have on training.
Their experience also matched the level of training and competition I required. This kind of platform enables us to balance expectations and hold each other accountable to our goals. I was no longer open to change but the necessity for it was confirmed when my coaches provided it for me. It came in the form of a team.
A team is not just a group of individuals with a common purpose. It is a group of passionate individuals with different strengths that help improve the weaknesses in each other to achieve a common goal. The team is made successful by good leadership. A good coach, like a good leader, is always learning, open to ideas and constantly searching for the most effective and efficient methods for improvement. This makes them willing to change, willing to evolve and, if properly communicated with the athlete, evolve together.
To successfully evolve together, the relationship between an athlete and a coach has seven elements: trust, experience, communication, accountability, passion, patience and time. For the magic to work, there is an eighth element that binds it all together – respect. It is vital that these components come from both the coach and the athlete and for that to happen both must earn each other’s respect.
The coach has to take the lead and, as the relationship progresses, a partnership will begin to emerge. A good coach not only prepares you for sport but they prepare you for life. They provide challenges that make for a better athlete and guidance in dealing with those challenges that make for a better person.

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