This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
As president and CEO of outdoor clothing company Patagonia, Rose Marcario is not afraid to do things differently. Since joining the company in 2008, Marcario has not shied away from a political fight, or from expanding the company’s environmental and social commitments, including protecting public lands, providing on-site childcare for workers, and eliminating excess waste in packaging.
Marcario joined Patagonia in 2008, originally serving under founder Yvon Chouinard as CFO and COO, after a long career in finance. She was an executive VP at the investment firm Capital Advisers and served as CFO of the now-defunct Apple spinoff General Magic. In her time at Patagonia, she has helped make north of a billion dollars in revenue and scaled the company’s environmental conservation goals to new heights. In 2012, she was part of the leadership team that got Patagonia its B certification, which means that the company is required to protect the interests of employees, investors, and the environment.
Marcario’s job has changed drastically under the Trump administration. “My greatest challenge as CEO was living our mission and creating a vision that would carry the company into the next generation,” she says. “A lot of what we’ve held dear and fought for over the last 30 years has been really under assault with the current administration.” So she hasn’t steered away from making the private company overtly political. In 2017, she spearheaded Patagonia’s efforts to join a coalition of Native American and grassroots groups in suing the Trump administration after it announced plans to drastically cut down the size of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, claiming the move was illegal.
The company also recently filed an Amicus Brief challenging the rollback of the Clean Power Plan. And in 2018, under her leadership, Patagonia endorsed two Democratic candidates who supported the protection of public lands, Nevada senator Jacky Rosen and Senator John Tester of Montana. (Both won their races.)
Patagonia is even tackling problems in agriculture and the food supply chain that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus. Overseeing Patagonia Provisions, the company’s sustainable food company, is what Marcario has been most excited about this past year. “It’s really about changing … from chemical agriculture to regenerative organic agriculture. I’m really excited about creating a food system that works for everybody.” The sustainable food business aims to reduce the environmental toll of the food system by adopting best practices in sourcing to repair the food chain.
On March 13, as coronavirus began spreading through the country, Patagonia was one of the first retailers in North America to close its e-commerce and retail operations entirely. And despite the fact that other retailers, including Gap and Banana Republic, have begun to open their stores as states ease lockdown restrictions, Patagonia has said that it will not open for in-store shopping until June at the earliest, and may even wait until later in the fall to ensure customer and worker safety.”We’re going to be cautious about the way we open up—we’re not going to necessarily follow what the state decrees are,” Marcario told The New York Times. (Some stores did begin offering curbside pickup on May 20.)
The retailer reorganized its distribution center in Nevada and has been experimenting with technology to minimize checkout lines, according to the Times. When the company furloughed 80% of its retail staff for three months, it ensured that they could retain their healthcare benefits.
While most of her activism is concentrated on furthering her company’s ecological and social goals, Marcario has also long been active in L.A.’s LGBTQIA theater community, as well as volunteering at the city’s Gay and Lesbian Center. She has been an actor and a theater director and producer. “While I have less time to volunteer than I used to, I do a lot of philanthropy around filmmaking, literary projects, and theater,” she says.
She cites the 1982 sports drama Personal Best, starring Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly, as a personal favorite. “When I took a break between my private equity job and working at Patagonia, I actually produced a musical about a lesbian relationship,” she says. “I think it’s still really important for queer people to see themselves reflected in culture and art.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
When Beth Ford was appointed president and CEO of Land O’Lakes in 2018, she knew she would be thrust into the spotlight. Ford, who is the only openly gay woman at the helm of a Fortune 500 company, said she was ambitious from an early age. But she says she didn’t aspire to such an achievement until she was in her 40s, in part because of the lack of available role models. “Think about the trajectory for female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies,” Ford says. “It has taken us a climb to get to [36 women].”
But the other reasons were more indicative of different stages of life. “In my 20s I was asking where the party was and can I afford my rent,” she quips. In her 30s, Ford was focused on gaining the broadest possible array of professional experiences and worked in a variety of industries from oil and gas to publishing to food and consumer packaged goods. After she got further along in her career and earned her MBA from Columbia, Ford started to see a path to the C-suite.
In 2012, she was hired by Land O’Lakes to lead its supply chain and operations. From there, Ford quickly ascended to chief operating officer of the nearly century-old company. (Land O’Lakes recently made headlines after deciding to remove the illustration of a Native American woman from its logo ahead of the company’s 100-year anniversary.)
Three years later, Ford was appointed CEO by an all-male board. “This board looked holistically [at me],” Ford says, to determine she was the right candidate to drive strategy and investment in communities and farms.
According to Ford, those results are inexorably tied to the health and well-being of American citizens and the U.S. economy. Her work with Land O’Lakes—which raked in $13.9 billion net sales in 2019—has aimed to improve agricultural technology and investment in that sector to lift up farmers. “One of the pillars of our [national] security,” Ford says, “is a safe and affordable food supply.” Part of her job is to remind people of the shared destiny of both rural and urban America, says Ford.
That’s never been more important than it is now, as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens supply chains and the farmers who rely on them not breaking down. Already, many dairy farmers have resorted to dumping thousands of gallons of milk as demand dwindled when hotels, restaurants, and schools shuttered. “As a farmer-owned cooperative, we are deeply aware of the ways COVID-19 is impacting rural communities, where critical infrastructure—ranging from broadband connection to healthcare facilities—can be lacking,” says Ford.
Right now Land O’Lakes is offering a short-term solution by offering free Wi-Fi, from its own facilities and those of its member-owners, in rural communities so people can do work, keep up with school, and meet with their doctors remotely. Long term, Ford has bigger plans: “As our nation heals from this pandemic, we will continue our efforts to advocate for better investment in these communities where our food is grown.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
Before dating apps became ubiquitous, Arlan Hamilton envisioned making her debut in Silicon Valley with an online dating service that would prioritize quality over quantity. “It was going to be a version 2.0 of a matchmaking website,” she says. “My idea was that I [could] make one couple happen once a day.” But Hamilton, a gay black woman and former music tour manager from Texas, was hardly the prototypical founder, and she quickly realized people like her were being neglected by investors in Silicon Valley.
“I started learning more and more about the discrepancies in the amount of money that goes to people who are not straight white men,” she says. “It was not only blatantly laid out in statistics. I was seeing it happen in real time. It just changed what my future would be.”
What she eventually created took aim not at the dating industry, but at the status quo of venture capital deal flow, which overwhelmingly backs white male founders. Only 12% of venture capital dollars go toward startups with at least one female founder, according to All Raise. Since 2009, of the nearly $425 billion raised in venture funding, just 0.32% went to startups led by Latinx women and .0006% to black female founders.
Hamilton, who was broke and homeless when she first arrived in San Francisco, spent months courting investors to no avail, eventually publishing a Medium post titled “Dear White Venture Capitalists: If you’re reading this, it’s (almost!) too late.” Hamilton finally got her break when angel investor Susan Kimberlin wrote her a check for $25,000, and soon after, she caught the eye of prominent venture capitalists like Chris Sacca and Marc Andreessen.
Since launching Backstage Capital in 2015, Hamilton has invested more than $7 million in 130 companies, 24 of which were through an accelerator that Backstage Capital launched last year across four cities: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, and London. Backstage Capital typically invests between $25,000 and $100,000 into each startup. Last year, after learning that Hamilton was struggling to raise money, Mark Cuban offered to invest $1 million. This month, she published her first book, It’s About Damn Time, and amid the coronavirus crisis, Backstage Capital has offered additional support to its portfolio and other founders through investor meetings and office hours, as well as legal and financial resources.
Unlike other venture capitalists, some of whom merely pay lip service to Silicon Valley’s diversity problem, Hamilton has woven identity into the DNA of Backstage Capital—namely, her own identity as a gay black woman. “I originally wanted to start a $1 million fund for LGBTQ founders,” she says, “[but I] couldn’t get traction. Then I said, let me just start with everything that I feel like I am.” That’s why Backstage Capital invests in all underrepresented entrepreneurs: women, people of color, and LGBTQ founders.
Hamilton isn’t just an advocate for the founders she invests in. Over the past few years, she has drawn admirers and press—including a cover story in Fast Company—and has made frequent speaking appearances to amplify her message. “I realized this isn’t going to be contained to just the amount of people I can get a check to,” she says. “This is going to have reverberations through whomever can see it—whoever can feel represented in this.”
Hamilton is, by her own admission, an “open book” on Twitter, where she regales her 70,000+ Twitter followers with candid commentary on her life and the venture capital industry. She first found an audience on a blog she ran in her twenties. “It started because of my identity as a gay person,” she says. “I had a blog for years called ‘Your Daily Lesbian Moment.’” Hamilton has been out since she was 16, but it was the response to the blog—and its 50,000 monthly visitors—that encouraged her to be as forthcoming as she is now. “[I realized] how much just stating my truth was helping other people,” she says. “People would write to me from the blog or MySpace and Facebook and say, ‘Because you talked so openly and freely about being a lesbian, I was able to come out to my parents.’”
Of course, Hamilton also has her detractors: Some industry observers have questioned her progress on a $36 million fund she announced in 2018, which she said would exclusively invest in black female founders. (According to Hamilton, two key investors fell through.) But Hamilton isn’t too bothered—and she’s still raising money. “I know what the future looks like for Backstage, and I’m doing this for the right reasons,” she says. “I’ll be doing this for decades.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
At the beginning of March, just as the coronavirus was beginning to take hold across the nation, Shamina Singh arrived back in the U.S. from a business trip to Ghana.
Singh—who is founder and president of the Center for Inclusive Growth, the philanthropic hub of Mastercard, as well as the company’s executive vice president of corporate sustainability—saw a need to take action.
She and the rest of the executive team worked to shepherd Mastercard’s investment of $25 million to join with those of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome. The total, of up to $125 million in seed funding, will go to accelerate identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling up treatments for COVID-19. “We basically were able to work through the weekend, and by Monday, we were in a place to take a resolution to our board,” she says. “We were all unified to try to make this happen.”
Where many companies would deliberate over factors such as risk and legal issues, she says, their team moved swiftly to make a commitment. “Time is our most valuable asset. . . . This speaks to the focus of queer women in tech,” she quips. “We move fast, balance a lot of things, and get a lot of stuff done.”
Singh says Mastercard recognizes its responsibility and the role its technology can play in response and recovery efforts related to COVID-19. “We have also donated close to $2 million to support frontline healthcare workers and most recently doubled down on our commitment to bring another 500 million unbanked people into the digital economy by 2025, raising our total commitment to 1 billion.”
Additionally, Singh mentors many young professionals and is involved with the company’s employee resource group for LGBTQ workers. She believes it’s important for everyone to feel like they can bring their full identity to work. “This idea you are holding something back for whatever reason holds your entire career back,” says Singh, who believes that is one of the biggest challenges underrepresented groups, including LGBTQ professionals, face in advancing their careers.
“Spending time with other employees and helping with things they care about, not just what I care about, gives them a sense of confidence and belonging,” says Singh. Ultimately, that encourages growth, not just for the company but for its people—and its customers, by extension. “The only way we’re going to achieve inclusive growth is by building a more connected world where everyone has equal access to a better life,” says Singh.
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
Two years ago, in the pages of Rolling Stone, Janelle Monáe finally confirmed something that the internet had all but presumed to be true. “Being a queer black woman in America,” she said, “someone who has been in relationships with both men and women—I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker.” She divulged that she first identified as bisexual and later as pansexual, too.
“For me, sexuality and sexual identity and fluidity is a journey,” she added in a recent interview with Lizzo. “It’s not a destination.”
If Monáe’s sexuality—namely, her rumored relationship with actress Tessa Thompson—has been a subject of fascination, so too has her dizzying body of work. In 2018, Monáe released her widely acclaimed third album, Dirty Computer, which was paired with a 46-minute “emotion picture” and earned her two Grammy nominations. (Monáe has racked up eight nominations over the years.) The Prince-inflected single “Make Me Feel,” whose accompanying video featured Monáe and Thompson awash in neon lighting, was hailed as a “bisexual anthem” even before Monáe came out.
“Dirty Computer was really a reflection of where I was at that time,” she told fellow Queer 50 honoree Roxane Gay earlier this year, in a cover story for The Cut. “I was discovering more and more about my sexuality. I was walking into being more sex positive, also understanding different ways to love and to be loved.”
Monáe’s ascent to multi-hyphenate accelerated in 2016: After declining nearly 30 acting offers, she made her film debut in Moonlight, which infamously won the Best Picture Oscar and an armful of other accolades. She followed that with a role in another critically acclaimed movie, Hidden Figures, alongside Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer. This year, the social thriller Antebellum—by the producers of Get Out and Us—will serve as a star vehicle for Monáe. (The film was initially slated for an April release but has since been postponed due to coronavirus.) She also stepped into a leading role in the Amazon series Homecoming, whose first season was headlined by Julia Roberts.
Though Monáe has long been reticent about her personal life—often citing her religious family—she has emerged as a fierce advocate and activist for marginalized communities, from agitating against police brutality to speaking at the Women’s March in 2017 and invoking Time’s Up in a powerful address at the 2018 Grammy Awards. She has called Dirty Computer an ode to black women and queer women. In January, she tweeted the hashtag #IAmNonBinary, which many interpreted as commentary on her own gender identity.
“I tweeted the #IAmNonbinary hashtag in support of Nonbinary Day and to bring more awareness to the community,” she explained to The Cut. “I retweeted the Steven Universe meme ‘Are you a boy or a girl? I’m an experience’ because it resonated with me, especially as someone who has pushed boundaries of gender since the beginning of my career. I feel my feminine energy, my masculine energy, and energy I can’t even explain.”
Monáe is, of course, known for her singular, androgynous fashion sensibility—along with her affinity for tuxedos—but another key piece of her artistic persona and advocacy is the Wondaland Arts Society, her record label and production company in Atlanta. Through Wondaland, Monáe has signed artists like singer and rapper Jidenna, and in late 2018, Wondaland inked a first-look deal with Universal. Wondaland has also allowed Monáe to maintain creative control while juggling her career aspirations: When Monáe signs acting projects, for example, she puts in writing that the film or television show will involve the musical stylings of Wondaland artists.
Monáe attributes much of her success to her careful curation of every facet of her career. “One of my biggest strengths is I’m unafraid to say no,” Monáe told Fast Company in 2018. “I’m not into people owning me. I have a strong vision, and any companies or partners who want to work with me have to match my purpose: shaping culture, redefining culture, and moving culture forward.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
Kara Swisher admits that she’s not always right.
But her opinions, now detailed in her New York Times column, on her podcasts Recode Decode and Pivot, and annually at her tech conference Code, are well informed by decades of reporting on an industry that has boomed and busted and boomed again—and have made her one of the most influential technology journalists of our time.
“I know what I’m talking about—on the things I know about more than other people—so I’m going to say what I think,” she says.
Known as both a no-bullshit straight talker and the ultimate charmer, Swisher has a unique ability to remain friends with sources whom she has eviscerated in print. Her ability to walk the line between these two personas has led to a prolific journalism career. She began reporting at The Washington Post in the 1990s and wrote two books about AOL, one of the first internet giants. After a stint at The Wall Street Journal, she and colleague Walt Mossberg launched a conference called All Things Digital, followed by the blog AllThingsD.com, which lived under the Dow Jones umbrella. In 2014, she and Mossberg started their own standalone tech news site Re/code, which was bought by Vox Media in 2015 (and integrated into Vox’s website in 2019). The All Things Digital conference morphed into the Code Conference.
These days, when she’s not writing her New York Times column, Swisher serves as the editor-at-large at both Recode and New York magazine. She continues to interview high-profile tech executives at Code and on Recode/Decode, which will end a five-year run at the beginning of July. Next up, Swisher is launching a new New York Times podcast that will air twice weekly this fall. She’s also thinking about how to engage more deeply with the fan community for her New York magazine podcast Pivot, which she produces and cohosts with NYU professor Scott Galloway. Plus, she’s pondering writing a book. The topic? It’s “tech-adjacent,” she says.
For Swisher, writing opinion, landing scoops, launching conferences and media companies, and recording podcasts are all what she calls “different instruments” in her orchestra, because each mode is in service of one thing: making good journalism. “I don’t think when you’re a reporter or journalist you need to stay in any lane,” she says. “I think all the lanes are mine.”
As it has been her entire career, her goal with her work is to examine technology from a position of skepticism, something tech journalism has rarely done. “I wasn’t a fanboy—I was a skeptical woman,” she says. “I think I spent a lot of time shifting people that way.”
Swisher has always been focused on pushing the conversation around tech toward examining its power structures rather than fawning over its latest releases. And while she briefly flirted with the idea of running for mayor of San Francisco a few years back, she’s decided to use her current position to keep pushing for change. “From the perch I’m in now, I have a lot of impact in terms of calling for tech regulation, for example,” she says.
Swisher also aims to use her platform to help lift up other women. She tries to ensure her staff, her conference panelists, and the guests on her podcast represent women and people of color, and she says she goes out of her way to mentor women. “I’m not always successful. I disappoint myself,” she says. “But I’m trying to be intentional in staffing and bringing people on stage. That’s because I’m a boss and I can make those decisions.”
She hopes to see more women in critical positions of power as well, since they have been historically underrepresented in the tech industry. “The changes of the last couple years have been really great, but still we don’t take our eye off the ball. The real systemic changes have not happened in ways that are important for women,” she says. “It’s really important to tell stories and to get in the room. But we have to be running things in a true way.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
“Be happy” is the simple mantra that drives everything in Nichole Mustard’s personal and professional life. It started when she bought a one-way ticket from Ohio to Los Angeles after college. “I didn’t have a job, a place to live, or a car,” she recalls. “But I figured if I was happy, the rest would follow.” And it did.
Today, Mustard is the chief revenue officer of Credit Karma, a business she cofounded. She helped to grow it from a small consumer finance platform aimed at providing free credit scores at the beginning of the recession in 2007 into a 100-million member community, with access to a marketplace of more than 100 financial service providers. Credit Karma was recently acquired by Intuit for approximately $7.1 billion in cash and stock.
The COVID-19 crisis arrived on the heels of Credit Karma’s acquisition and its U.K. expansion, which brought more than 3.5 million additional members. “Our members look to us for help making sense of their finances, and they need us now more than ever,” she says. “We know many, if not all, are impacted by the current economic situation.”
Mustard says the company is harnessing its internal resources and working closely with partners and government agencies to provide information that members are saying they need. For example, staff across engineering, product, and marketing came off other projects to develop and launch Relief Roadmap, which is designed to assist members in finding federal, state, and local benefits and free services to help them in the wake of the economic fallout from the pandemic.
According to Mustard, building a business that was both data- and consumer-oriented was a way for her to be as authentic in her professional life as she is in her personal life. “When we started Credit Karma, [being queer] was never questioned. There was no awkwardness,” says Mustard, who is a mother of four. “It means there’s always someone at the table who brings that lens,” she explains, whether that’s toward products, employment benefits, or company celebrations.
She says she’s been glad to be able to share her perspective and experience with those around her. “I take a lot of pride in the behaviors I show my team, peers, employees, and my children,” she says.
“Being consistent about who you are is an important part of advocacy,” Mustard says, whether that is leading marches or being the person “who quietly, subtly every day” shows others that LGBTQ people are the same as anyone else. And that, says Mustard, “feels good as a mom, a founder, and an executive.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
This story is part of Fast Company‘s first-ever Queer 50 List. Click here to see the full list.
Deirdre O’Brien has had the sort of career that many people dream about. In January 1988, as a newly minted college graduate, O’Brien took a job at Apple working on production of the Macintosh SE, an early iteration of the classic Macintosh line that introduced personal computers to lay people. More than three decades later, Apple is a trillion-dollar company—and O’Brien is one of the highest ranking executives at its helm.
In 2017, O’Brien became the head of people, reporting directly to Tim Cook, which means she oversees everything from talent development and recruiting to benefits and compensation for more than 137,000 employees. Last year, when former retail chief Angela Ahrendts stepped down, O’Brien’s role expanded to include leading Apple’s retail division, which operates upwards of 500 stores across the world and employs more than 70,000 workers.
Since the coronavirus hit, O’Brien has been tasked with navigating how—and when—to reopen Apple’s retail stores, which have long been a hub for both sales and customer service. In March, Apple shuttered all retail stores outside of China to do its part in curbing the spread of coronavirus. As of this month, Apple has opened nearly 100 stores across the world, but with reduced occupancy and the option of curbside pickup to abide by social distancing measures. Customers and staffers alike must wear a face covering, and temperature checks are required at the door.
As the head of people, O’Brien has also steered many of the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Like other tech companies, Apple has struggled to make significant progress in its corporate ranks, though it has made greater strides than its peers due to its retail arm. In 2018, more than 30% of Apple’s new hires were underrepresented minorities; across the company, 9% of employees are black and 14% identify as Hispanic. Those figures are even higher in the retail sector, where 15% of workers are black and 21% are Hispanic.
“Apple has changed my life and supported me in so many ways, not least of which is the fact that I met my wife here,” O’Brien says. “I feel a deep responsibility to support and carry our culture forward for everyone else—for anyone who comes from a background that has been historically underrepresented.”
After talking to new parents—especially women—O’Brien felt there was still more Apple could do to ease their transition back to work, even beyond the company’s 16-week paid leave policy. That’s why Apple introduced a return to work policy last fall that gave new parents an additional four-week grace period when they returned from leave, which allows them to work part-time and set their own hours—all while being paid like full-time employees. The benefits apply to retail workers, as well. For parents who adopt, Apple nearly tripled its financial assistance to $14,000 and expanded leave.
“I think many times working parents feel like they need to deal with that quietly and make it seem perfectly seamless,” O’Brien said at the time. “We all know life is complicated. So [we’re] making it really clear that we’re supporting them in that journey.”
In just over a year, O’Brien—who helped launch Apple’s inaugural online and retail outposts earlier in her career—has made her mark on Apple’s retail footprint, too, launching seven new locations around the world and transforming 16 existing locations. The most notable renovation was for the Fifth Avenue location in New York City, which nearly doubled the flagship store’s footprint and flooded it with natural light and foliage. The store’s grand reopening was timed to the launch of the iPhone 11 back in September, with O’Brien, Cook, and other Apple executives in attendance.
But for all her professional accolades, O’Brien has said one of the moments she is most proud of dates back to her twenties—when she came out a few years into her tenure at Apple. “Early on, even though Apple has always been a very open-minded place, coming out was a really tough decision for me,” she says. “I worried a lot about how I would be treated because I was different from the prevailing norm. I’ll never forget how hard it was to take that step, but it is a decision I’ve never once regretted.”
WATCH: Queer leaders on why Pride is even more important in 2020
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