Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Gwyneth Paltrow gets the NYT Magazine treatment, Korean dads are taking more paternity leave, and female founders are raising big bucks. Have a terrific Thursday.
EVERYONE'S TALKING
• Ladies be raising. Yesterday was a busy day for female founders and CEOs. Here, three big deals that went down:
23andMe and GlaxoSmithKline. The U.K. drugmaker, led by CEO Emma Walmsley, is acquiring a $300 million stake in 23andMe, the genetic-testing company co-founded by CEO Anne Wojcicki. Under the four-year deal, the companies will collaborate to mine the startup's genetic data to find new drug targets and better select patients for clinical studies. Fortune
ClassPass. The workout subscription platform founded by now-chairman Payal Kadakia, has raised a $85 million Series C led by Singapore-based Temasek Holdings Ltd. The startup has now racked up a total of $255 million in funding and plans to expand into 20 new countries and 10 new domestic cities by the end of next year. Bloomberg
Guild Education. The employee education platform, led by CEO and co-founder Rachel Carlson, raised a $40 million financing round—also a Series C. Guild Education helps big companies offer access to higher ed credentials or degrees as a perk for employees. Tech Crunch
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
• The goop on G.P. This New York Times Magazine story about Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop—written by my No.1 writing crush Taffy Brodesser-Akner—is one of the best things I've read in a long, long time. Her insight into the wellness industry, the appeal Paltrow (aka G.P.) holds for her devotees, and the way outrage over Goop's most bizarre medical claims only serves to drive more people to the site is unmissable—I urge you to make time to read the whole thing. New York Times Magazine
• Not very forgiving. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has proposed changes to the department’s loan forgiveness program that would make it harder for students who have been defrauded by their universities to receive forgiveness. It's a reversal from an Obama-era policy that was created after two for-profit universities were found to have misled their students with false advertisements. Fortune
• Basketball baby. This ESPN piece from friend of the Broadsheet Zach Lowe (Hi, Zach!), tells the story of Jenny Boucek, former Sacramento Kings assistant coach and now holder of a non-traveling coaching gig with the Dallas Mavericks. It's a dual drama—first, her struggle to conceive as a forty-something single woman, then the challenge of figuring out how to maintain the NBA coaching job she fought to hard to get. "Now it became: Can I really do both?" Boucek says. "Can it be done? It hadn't been done in the NBA." ESPN
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Shari Ballard, senior EVP and president of multichannel retail for Best Buy Co. Inc., is stepping down after 25 years at the electronics giant. Her job put her in charge of all U.S. Best Buy stores, e-commerce, Best Buy Mexico and the company’s real estate strategy, earning her the No. 33 spot on Fortune's MPW list. Back in 2015, Fortune featured Ballard as one of the female execs who fueled Best Buy's turnaround.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• Someone make a Wade Wiki! Jess Wade, a postdoctoral researcher in the field of plastic electronics at Imperial College London’s Blackett Laboratory, has made it her mission to update Wikipedia to provide more recognition for women's achievements in science. She says she's created about 270 entries in the past year: “I had a target for doing one a day, but sometimes I get too excited and do three.” The Guardian
• Risky move. Last week, Bill De Leon, Pimco's head of risk management, left the company following an internal investigation into allegations that he had inappropriately touched a colleague. Now, Barron's reports that he recently had a separate issue where he had to apologize for allegedly verbally harassing two other women. Barron's
• Korean dads FTW. Thanks in part to government incentives encouraging companies and dads to embrace parental leave, more than 8,000 men in South Korea took the leave in the first half of this year. That's a big jump over 2017's stats, and a massive increase from 2010, when just 800 fathers took the time off to care for a new child. Quartz
Share today's Broadsheet with a friend.
Looking for previous Broadsheets? Click here.
ON MY RADAR
A timeline of the drama surrounding the defunct Ivanka Trump fashion brand Fortune
Men are freaking out about their low sperm count New York Times
Swedish student stops deportation of Afghan man by refusing to take seat on plane CBS News
Before her arrest as an alleged Russian agent, Maria Butinas drew notice at American University Washington Post
QUOTE
|
|
|---|
