Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Yahoo prepares to spin, Huma Abedin has some choice words for Donald Trump, and TIME names Angela Merkel its 2015 Person of the Year. Have a terrific Wednesday.
EVERYONE'S TALKING
• It's Merkel's year. This morning, TIME revealed that Anglea Merkel has been named its 2015 Person of the Year. A cover story on the German Chancellor praises her for steering her nation and the EU as a whole "through not one but two existential crises," the Greek default and the current migrant crisis. Merkel was one of two women on the eight-person shortlist—reality star Caitlyn Jenner held the second spot—and the publication also nominated activists of the Black Lives Matter movement, many of whom are women. Time
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
• Yahoo spins. It's official: Yahoo says it has dropped a plan to spin off its $31 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, due to possible tax risk. Instead, the company will spin off its core Internet business, including its stake in Yahoo Japan. Where does that leave CEO Marissa Mayer? "Effectively back to square one." New York Times
• We hear you, Huma. Huma Abedin, longtime aide of Hillary Clinton, is bashing Donald Trump's plan to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. "I’m a proud Muslim—but you don’t have to share my faith to share my disgust,” Abedin wrote in an email to Clinton supporters. “Trump wants to literally write racism into our law books.” Fortune
• She's back. Meredith Whitney, who rose to prominence as a bank industry analyst during the financial crisis, has a new gig: overseeing an $800 million equity portfolio for insurer Arch Capital Group. Previously, Whitney ran Kenbelle Capital, her hedge fund that shuttered earlier this year. Bloomberg
• Turning code Inside Out. Google and Pixar are partnering to create a new coding tutorial based on the film Inside Out. The creators of the fun new game—really, I tried it!—hope that focusing the program around Riley, the movie's young heroine, will help convince more girls to give computer science a shot. Fortune
• LinkedIn leaders. LinkedIn has released its list of top contributors. Among those who made the cut: Kleiner Perkins partner Juliet de Baubigny, Ellevest CEO and founder Sallie Krawcheck, and author Suzy Welch. LinkedIn
• Tech meets luxury. Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s SVP of retail, is beginning to put her stamp on the tech icon's stores. So what is the Ahrendts touch? In a word: ultraluxe. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Publishing company Gannett has named Joanne Lipman, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast Portfolio, chief content officer. Refinery29, a news site for millennial women, has promoted Amy Emmerich to the newly created position of chief content officer. The company is also promoting founding team member Christene Barberich to global editor-in-chief.
BROADVIEW
Today's Broadview comes to you from Fortune's Stacey Higginbotham.
'Hack a Hairdryer' was sexist, but it also might have worked.
Critics this week attacked IBM for a Hack a Hair Dryer campaign that called for girls to get involved in science and engineering by asking them to imagine what they could do with a hairdryer (besides dry their hair). The video featured women in lab coats and a blow dryer forcing ping pong balls through a series of tubes, slides and funnels as part of complicated looking Rube Goldberg machines.
It made for a compelling video—and terrible engineering.
But in this case it also made for a terrible cultural message. Women saw not an innocent hair dryer, but a tool of sexist oppression. IBM had wrapped science and engineering in girly girl trappings. Women and men on Twitter quickly began tweeting their disdain for the campaign. IBM apologized and took the video down.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• The 50% solution? A full 50% of employees at private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners are women. In its most recent fund, TSG reported a net return of 50%, more than double the industry average. Are the two stats related? Co-founder and CEO Chuck Esserman thinks so. “Better decisions come from diversity,” he says. New York Times
• Turf war. The U.S. women's national soccer team refused to play a friendly on Sunday after deeming the artificial turf field unsafe. The players are spoke out about FIFA's sexist policies, which require women (but not men) to play some games on dangerous fake grass. Time
• I'm a Barbie boy. Two Kellogg School of Management professors weigh in on the latest Barbie ad, which features a young boy. The attention-getting spot raises a big question: Could this be the beginning of the end for gender-specific brands? Fortune
• A capital crime. In this video, Joyus.com founder and CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy talks about how unconscious bias has limited the number of women who succeed in venture capital. Bloomberg
• A sad song. Mary Forsberg Weiland, ex-wife of rocker Scott Weiland, who died on Dec. 3, writes a blistering essay about the singer's struggle with addiction and its effect on their two children. Noting that our society "almost encourages" musicians to abuse drugs and alcohol, she says: "Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy." Rolling Stone
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ON MY RADAR
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Here's what's helping the Girl Scouts sell more cookies Fortune
QUOTE
We will hold uppermost our values. And we will fraternize with the five million Muslims who exercise their religion freely and kindly. And we will fight against the 10,000 barbarians who kill, so they say, in the name of Allah.
Danielle Mérian, a 77-year-old Parisian whose thoughtful words after the Paris attacks have inspired many.
