How Child Care Helps Retain Top Talent | VP-Elect Kamala Harris’s Historic Firsts | Meet Upwork CEO Hayden Brown | And More

Plus: tips for finding common ground

John Adams began his tenure as our nation’s first vice president on April 21, 1789. Over the next 231 years, 47 other people have gone on to hold the office. All have been men; all have been white. 

On Saturday, Senator Kamala Harris officially became vice president-elect and broke this streak of homogeneity. And it’s not just her gender that’s historic: In addition to becoming our nation’s first female vice president-elect, she will also be the first Black person, first Asian-American and first graduate of a historically Black college or university to hold the office. 

These firsts mean a lot to a lot of people, including female founders of color. “It's a kind of beautiful, full circle moment for the story of America, because I think women, and more specifically Black women, have done so much work—and are sort of the backbone of this country—without the acknowledgement of the work that we've done,” Alia Daniels, cofounder of the global queer digital media network Revry, told me last week. “And so I think being able to see someone who looks like me, in one of those positions, it's just a level of pride that I don't even know if I can fully express.”

Cheers to making history!
Maggie

P.S.: According to the Society for Human Resource Management, only 32% of organizations that are planning to return to in-office work have outlined child-care plans for their employees. My favorite advice on the site this week is, therefore, a reminder to CEOs and CHROs alike that child care benefits are as important as healthcare coverage when it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent.

ICYMI: Stories From The Week

Stacey Abrams is getting some well-deserved credit following record voter turnout in Georgia last week: Fair Fight, the organization she founded to promote fair elections, helped register 800,000 new voters this year. 

CVS Health on Friday announced that Karen Lynch, who is currently executive vice president of the company and president of Aetna, will be promoted to CEO in February.

Kersti Kaljulaid, the current president of Estonia, is running to become the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) next secretary-general. She is the first woman to ever be elected as Estonia’s president, and would be the first female OECD head, too.

Britney Spears has lost a long-running legal battle to remove her father as the conservator of her estate, with her lawyer telling a court on Tuesday that Spears fears her father and will not perform or resume her career while he has any control over it.

More trouble for Alex and Ani founder Carolyn Rafaelian: a New York State judge has ruled that she must repay the $5 million (plus interest and lawyers’ fees) that she borrowed from London-based investment firm Lion Capital, which owns the majority of her jewelry company.

When social entrepreneur Mavis Nduchwa saw farmers struggling to deal with elephants trampling their crops and homes in Botswana, she saw a golden business opportunity: bee hives that could both scare off elephants and restore bee populations.

Check List

#1: Create a digital water cooler. Some 31% of remote teams report feeling more connected to their colleagues thanks to conscious attempts to set up things like virtual tea and coffee breaks, book and film clubs and forums for sharing playlists.

#2: Fact-check yourself. If you get caught in a cycle of catastrophizing (“I totally blew that call,” etc), stop and ask yourself if there’s evidence for what you’re saying. Questioning negative self-talk can take you out of panic mode.

#3: Forget the “b” word. “Budgeting” carries with it lots of baggage, but you can get your financial life in order by instead thinking critically about what brings your life value, security, and abundance.

Across Forbes