Socially awkward
FFF
Welcome to The Chief Brief. Every Sunday, I spotlight global, diverse, and innovative female leaders impacting the world around them. I curate and break down stories from across the world that caught my eye and help you connect with the women you should know, if you don’t already! Welcome to my passion project of building a globally aware and connected community of women leaders.
Happy Sunday!
Let’s talk about
Social awkwardness
I hosted my first party in two years yesterday. The garden was commandeered, the tables decorated, and socially distanced blankets and pillows were all laid out. My bar could rival one at a small restaurant. I’d cooked up a storm with enough to feed an army, and I was terrified. I had attempted to attend a similar party not long ago where I found myself literally clinging to a wall. I thought it bizarre that I felt anxious about meeting a big group of my (double vaccinated) friends.
I wasn’t alone. A few weeks prior, I had my first social drinks with a former London City CEO. She, like me is no retiring wallflower, and famous for her outspokenness. A few minutes in, and we were both in confession mode. We were happy to see each other in-person, but were feeling a bit overwhelmed and anxious.
So, before the hordes descended, I decided to see if I was dreaming up a problem that didn’t exist. And how could I re-enter the post-Covid world and host my party comfortably? It turns out science and research had the answers. Resuming in-person interactions post-pandemic, according to a report from the American Psychological Association (APA) is officially a phenomenon psychologists have dubbed "re-entry anxiety."
There are generally two groups of people who experience re-entry anxiety: those who have a "lurking fear" that they will catch or spread the new coronavirus, and those who feel their social skills have atrophied and may find it challenging to re-engage in social interactions. - Lily Brown, Director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine
When it comes to getting back to the workplace (as we all are), that re-entry anxiety manifests again.
“Re-entering the busy world will be a new type of stress, because we’re not used to it anymore. It simply has a lot of challenges embedded into it: being in traffic, getting to work on time, parking, managing family schedules, and having social interactions all day. Those are the small things that can add up to leave you feeling overstimulated or exhausted, making it an unpleasant transition.” - said Elissa Epel, PhD, professor and vice chair in the Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Fransisco (UCSF)
The UCSF Employee Coping and Resiliency Program offers tips for managers to support employees who may feel anxious about returning to in-person work. There’s no right or wrong way to handle re-entry, but the University’s research says: communicate your needs, go at your own pace, and think of the changes as a way to build resilience.
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has pretty good advice too. BACP’s recommendations for re-entry into social situations is to do it at your own pace. They back it up with tips on how to cope with a sensory overload and social anxiety. BACP recommends that if these steps don’t get you over the social hump, turn to the professionals.
People have had different experiences through this pandemic. Some have suffered loss, others have flourished, people’s world views have changed, and for many priorities have too. All the psychology papers and articles I have poured over talk about a range of issues that can trigger anxiety. And they unanimously recommend approaching friends and colleagues with compassion and empathy while respecting their new boundaries.
Following the science, I prepared for my official re-entry into a post-lockdown world by:
a) meeting friends 1:1 or by joining small groups over a period of time.
b) I went for quick walks on busy high streets, took the underground to nowhere, popped into shops, and even a pub or two to get my brain acclimatised.
c) I spoke openly to some friends about understanding and respecting differing opinions on vaccines and masks. And I remained firm about my boundaries on physical proximity to those who choose not to follow guidance.
d) To practise coping with social anxiety, I even paid attention to what my partner was saying (which was new to him), rather than focussing on my internal thoughts.
All that preparation helped make my litmus test of a party a success for me. If you’re feeling socially awkward, anxious or stressed as we re-enter the world, I highly recommend anticipatory planning. It is a great coping mechanism! Have an amazing weekend!
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Policy matters
Tanzania 2.0
Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been in office for four months. And she’s spent that time emphatically ending the official denial of the Covid pandemic, and moderating the radical policies of her predecessor, to regenerate economic growth in the country.
Her first port of call has been pacifying mining investors by reversing the late John Magufuli’s resource nationalism approach. That has brought new deals on the table including, $3 billion earmarked by China's Sichuan Hongda for a new iron and coal mine complex, and a $30 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal developed with Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon and Equinor ASA. Even Barrick Gold (the world’s second largest gold mining company) has been convinced to re-invest in the country.
Winning allies
Janet Yellen’s trip to Brussels this week was her first visit as U.S. Treasury secretary. And she checked off quite a few of her to do list while she was there. She managed to solidify G20 political support for a global corporate tax deal and gave European Union officials an excuse to delay a problematic digital tax proposal. The Irish, and her own counterparts in the Republican party are yet to buy into the idea of a global minimum tax rate. During her trip she also tried to seek a stronger alliance with Europe against China.
According to Associated Press (AP) Janet reportedly said:
“Together, we need to counter threats to the principles of openness, fair competition, transparency and accountability, these challenges include China’s unfair economic practices, malign behaviour and human rights abuses. The more we confront these threats with a unified front, the more successful we will be.”
China wasn’t happy with Janet’s comments saying:
“China strongly deplores and rejects Treasury Secretary Yellen’s remarks,” Zhao Lijian, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson. According to AP he blasted Yellen's remarks, saying Beijing has “always firmly supported” the World Trade Organization's (WTO) multilateral trading system. On the U.S. position regarding the plight of Muslim ethnic minorities in its Xinjiang region Zhao said, “The U.S. is obsessed with playing up and churning out Xinjiang-related lies, the U.S. is in no position to judge the human rights situation in other countries,” saying that the U.S. should “make more effort in solving its own human rights problems.”
Calming ruffled feathers
Britain’s Trade Secretary Liz Truss has used a five-day visit to the U.S. to make peace on trade tariffs. Together with U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai, she also aimed her ire at China’s anti-competitive practices. Her trip was also about forging fresh ties with the country’s tech giants. She met Silicon Valley companies as well as representatives of the California governor.
Business not as usual
Long road ahead
The number of women on FTSE 350 boards are unlikely to catch up to men till 2036. The Women Count 2021 report, produced by consultancy ‘The Pipeline’ is an annual study of the number of roles held by women at executive committee level or higher. It found that just 15 companies of the 350 had female chief executives. 85% of all executives on main boards are men, and 78% of all executive committee roles are male. Women make up more than half of executive committees and boards at just 4% of FTSE 350 companies.
The worst performing sector of FTSE 350 companies is manufacturing and engineering, where on average just a fifth of members of executive committees are women. Media companies performed the best where 44% of executive committees are comprised of women, double the FTSE 350 average of 22%.
Allies along the way
Career site Comparably put together its latest ranking of the best CEOs according to female employees. It considers U.S. companies, is based on a 12 month period that this time falls slap bang through the height of the pandemic. The companies considered had to have more than 500 employees.
Topping the charts for large companies were Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, Farmer’s Insurance's Jeffrey Dailey and Medallia’s Leslie Stretch. Some of what their female employees said about them: “is genuine and authentic, focused on diversity and inclusion and caring about employees as whole people and our leadership, is unmatched in their engagement and empathy toward our workforce." Seems there is a formula to keep employees happy, after all.
Bull trap
JP Morgan’s not hot on Cathie Wood’s flagship ETF fund ARK Innovation. JPM’s Shawn Quigg says watch out, a second half increase in Treasury yields could trigger declines in the ETF which is up around 19% since May. In a note to clients this week he wrote, “Enter the bull trap reversal!” Ark Investment Management enjoyed a stellar start to 2021 propelled by gains in sectors such as electric vehicles, biotech and cryptocurrencies, as well as advances in stocks that benefited from the stay-at-home trade. When those got on shaky ground the main ETF lost 35% or so from mid-Feb to mid-May.
Shawn believes ARK is showing many of the bubble-like traits seen in funds at the turn of the century, and betting against the fund with options should be a move to consider.
Tech stuff
Google’s woes
In France
France’s antitrust watchdog has fined Google €500m (£428m) for failing to comply with the regulator’s orders on how to conduct talks with the country’s news publishers in a row over copyright.
The antitrust body’s chief, Isabelle de Silva said “When the authority decrees an obligation for a company, it must comply scrupulously, both in the spirit and letter (of the decision). Here, this was unfortunately not the case.” She also said the regulator considered that Google had not acted in good faith in its negotiations with the publishers.
The US tech group must come up with proposals within the next two months on how it would compensate news agencies and other publishers for the use of their news. If it does not do that, the company would face additional fines of up to €900,000 a day. Google said it was very disappointed with the decision but would comply.
In Europe
The European Union has opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abuses its leading role in the advertising-technology sector, the most wide-ranging case yet to look at that pillar of the tech giant’s business. Informal investigations have been on since at least 2019. This formal investigation will look at a broad array of allegedly anticompetitive business practices around Google’s brokering of advertisements and sharing of user data with advertisers across websites and mobile apps—one of the newest areas of antitrust scrutiny for the company.
“Online advertising services are at the heart of how Google and publishers monetise their online services. We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack.” — Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust chief.
In the U.S.
Google’s facing three similar cases in the U.S. Two cases revolve around 36 states that are suing Google over its alleged Play Store monopoly and antitrust practices. Another, a competition case filed by the DOJ won’t go to trial till at least 2023.
FFF’s
Female Founders Fund third fund is now closed. Oversubscribed, Fund III raised $57 million to create what FFF considers “the largest fund for seed capital specifically for female founders.”
Fund III brings FFF’s total assets under management to over $95 million since it was formed in 2014 to invest in female-founded technology companies and lifestyle brands. According to Anu Duggal, founding partner of FFF, the third fund’s portfolio is already 70% invested in BIPOC founders (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour).
FFF is backed by institutional investors including Goldman Sachs, Cambridge Associates, Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Twitter, Plexo Capital and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and includes investments from 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Houseparty co-founder Sima Sistani.
Europe’s Angels
Sifted is at it again! This time their team has put together a comprehensive list of 100 plus active female angels in Europe. They truly echo my philosophy: If you say you can’t find her, it means you’re just not looking hard enough.
The Sifted team plans to regularly update this resource and also use it to track the development of a diverse angel ecosystem in Europe which currently puts women at only 11% of all angels. If you’re an angel, make sure you’re on there. If you’re looking for an angel - a pretty good list is now at your fingertips!
Have you met
Maria Leptin, Europe’s new research boss
Maria Leptin, a German developmental geneticist will become the next president of the European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s major funding agency for basic research. The European Commission announced the decision on 30 June, and she officially takes the reins on October 1st.
Maria is currently the director of EMBO, Europe’s life-sciences organisation, which is based at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. She runs research groups at EMBL and the University of Cologne in Germany but intends to wind down her research labs at EMBL and Cologne to focus on her new role.
Caught my eye
Women for sale
Afreen Fatima participated in an online forum about the persecution of Muslims in India on July 4th. Minutes after the 23 year old Indian student activist logged off she was inundated with messages saying she’d been ‘put up for sale’ on a fake online auction. In the U.S. 25 year old Hiba Beg had just returned from enjoying Independence Day celebrations in the city. That’s when she also discovered her profile was up for virtual auction on “Sulli deals”.
Photographs of more than 80 vocal and visible Muslim women including students, activists and journalists of Indian origin, had been uploaded on an app called “Sulli deals” without their knowledge. The creators of the platform offered visitors a chance to claim a “Sulli” – a derogatory term used by right-wing Hindu trolls for Muslim women – calling them “deals of the day”. The BBC reports that there was no real sale of any kind - the purpose of the app was just to degrade and humiliate. This act of intimidation resulted in criminal complaints, and global public outrage forcing GitHub which hosted the app to take it down.
Mazel Tov
Mazel Tov! Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his partner Susanne Thier are expecting a baby. Privacy being a big thing in Europe, little is known about Susanne other than she was an economics teacher, and most recently worked in the finance ministry. The two met have been together since she was 17, and he 18.
"We are overjoyed and grateful that there will be three of us soon. A wonderful joint task awaits us, which we look forward to with great anticipation. I ask for your understanding that we will keep our private life private as before. But we are glad to be able to share this soon unmistakable joy with you! " - Sebastian Kurz
International spousal incident
You’d think diplomacy and avoiding international incidents would be a required skill for an ambassador’s spouse. Not in the case of Belgium’s Ambassador to South Korea, Peter Lescouhier. The country’s Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmès had to urgently recall him “Without further delay” after his wife Xiang Xueqiu’s fights became big news in South Korea for the second time in four months.
Belgium had already officially recalled Ambassador Lescouhier in May after CCTV footage of his wife slapping a shopkeeper triggered a national scandal in Korea in April. This time, she slapped a street cleaner twice. The embassy has had to disable comments on its Facebook page, after being flooded with angry emoticons.
The artsy stuff
ArtSugar
ArtSugar has announced the raise of a $500,000 seed round from Curate Capital this week. It is a female-founded e-commerce retailer, headed and curated by founder, CEO, and fine artist Alix Greenberg and has pioneered art curation for the Instagram generation. Curate in the meantime is known for funding female founders. ArtSugar claims to bridge the gap between mass-produced wall art & decor at big-box retailers and high-end fine art.
ArtSugar experienced an 80% increase in year-over-year revenue since March 2020. The company also donates proceeds from every purchase to notable charities such as God's Love We Deliver, Gyrl Wonder, and The Trevor Project.
#FreeBritney
Britney Spears spoke to an LA court for the second time in a month about her 13 year conservatorship. And her words are finally having some impact. The judge agreed Britney could choose her own lawyer, in a massive win for the singer. Mathew Rosengart was confirmed as her new lawyer, replacing Samuel Ingham, the man appointed by the court in 2008. Britney has asked the court to immediately remove her father Jamie Speakers from the complex legal arrangement, and that he be charged with “conservatorship abuse.” She has said she would be happy allowing co-conservator Jodi Montgomery to remain in the meantime.
This is the most courtroom action Britney has been able to see in years, and it’s all happened in the three weeks since her first testimony. Her long-term manager Larry Rudolph reportedly resigned and the Bessemer Trust, a financial management company that was hired in 2020 to oversee Spears's estate alongside her father, also pulled out of the arrangement, saying there had been "changed circumstances".
Executive Producing Duchess Megan
Remember that multi-million dollar deal that Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s Archwell Productions signed with Netflix? Well, the first project partnering with David Furnish is now officially on the lot, and it’s an animation.
Megan is creating a series called ‘Pearl’ (a working title) which follows a 12-year-old girl who according to the Duchess, “goes on an adventure to find inspiration from influential women throughout history.” Upon its release, I’m assuming critics and audiences will have much to say.
PS: At Netflix, Archewell is also developing “Heart of Invictus,” a docu-series chronicling the global adaptive sports competition that Prince Harry founded.
Must Watch
Trust the Black Widow to crush it!
24 films in, and Marvel still manages to keep us hooked!
Disney and Marvel's superhero adventure "Black Widow" directed by Cate Shortland, captured a massive $80 million in its first weekend, crushing the benchmark for the biggest opening weekend since the pandemic. Black Widow may have got her moment to shine much after the men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Scarlett Johansson’s assassin made it worth the wait. Viewers and critics alike have also been raving about the cast, especially Black Widow’s potential MCU successor played by Florence Pugh.
The film’s Rotton Tomato scores say it all: 80% on the Tomato-meter & 92% Audience popcorn Score! Here’s a preview, if you’re still undecided if Black Widow makes it to your summer watch list!