Good morning,
It was a busy week!
“Last August, our cofounder and CEO Clint Lee felt the effects of working from home,” Deena Naccarella, CFO at video technology company OneDay, told me. “He decided to take his family to Colorado to work remotely for a few weeks. And after coming back and feeling refreshed, he was inspired to share this with his team.” New Digs is OneDay’s program that reimburses employees for a stay at a destination away from home where they’ll work remotely. During the war for talent, OneDay is among the companies creating innovative perks to show appreciation for employees. I also talked to leaders at Pacaso, Siemens Mobility, and Chipotle about their company perks.
The Alliance for Board Diversity, in collaboration with Deloitte, released a multiyear study Tuesday on board diversity changes from 2016 to 2020 across the Fortune 500. The Fortune 100 is outpacing the 500 in board diversity. “There has been a strategic inflection point that we’ve all gone through as a society that is helping us take a deeper look at diverse representations across corporate America and certainly within the boardroom,” Carey Oven, national managing partner at the Center for Board Effectiveness and chief talent officer at Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory said. Oven also noted that although there’s progress, “it is gradual and slow.”
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year crushed the travel industry. Matthias Tillmann, who has worked in leadership roles at Trivago since 2016, began his job as CFO in January 2020. Tillmann talked with me about how the travel search site survived the pandemic, new opportunities for the future, and how his collaboration with Trivago CEO Axel Hefer was essential. “I could always turn to him and ask for his advice or his opinion … he trusted me and let me do what I thought was the right thing to do,” Tillmann said. “Working 24/7 in the first couple of months, you just had to trust each other.” The company is excited about summer travel, he said. “To be honest, it has been a long and very difficult winter, in particular in Europe,” Tillmann said.
High-powered CEOs and leaders participated in Fortune’s 2021 Global Forum on Tuesday and Wednesday and talked about the lessons learned in an unprecedented year and the path forward. There was abundant talk about finance and the bottom line. I’m sharing a few quotes from leaders from Best Buy, Carlyle Group, MicroStrategy, and more on financial topics. David Taylor, chairman, president, and CEO at Procter & Gamble’s thoughts on inflation: “I think it’s inevitable with what’s happened. We’ll see sequential increases. How much? I don’t know. What is clear is across many different input goods costs are up. And that’s going to have to be reflected over time throughout the economy.” Read more here.
See you Monday.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
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Join us for the first of a virtual three-part series event for emerging CFOs and senior finance leaders, Stepping Out of Your Finance Comfort Zone, presented in partnership with Workday, June 16 from 11–11:45 a.m. EDT. Geoff Colvin, Fortune‘s senior editor-at-large and I will moderate a conversation with: Kristina Salen, CFO at WWE; Harmit Singh, EVP and CFO at Levi Strauss & Co.; and Tania Secor, Global CFO at R/GA. We’ll explore the rise of big data analytics, A.I., machine learning, and even talk crypto. You’ll have a chance to learn from these finance leaders who successfully scaled the ladder and are now sharing what it takes to get to the top. Click here to register now.
Big deal
Many companies are embracing the hybrid work model, according to a new report on remote work by MindEdge, an e-learning company founded by Harvard and MIT educators. Almost half (49%) of survey respondents said their company will pivot to a hybrid work schedule. The data is based on a survey of 848 U.S. residents ages 18 and up who currently work remotely, full- or part-time, or during the last year.
Going deeper
Here are a few good Fortune weekend reads:
The battle for talent: Workers have an edge over employers as the pandemic wanes by S. Mitra Kalita
Hot cryptocurrencies set off a stampede for their unlikely mascot: Shiba Inu dogs by Danielle Abril
Cybercriminals now have marketing departments by Sophie Mellor
How Nissan, Rolls-Royce, and Virgin Hyperloop hope to revolutionize travel by Jonathan Vanian
Leaderboard
Some notable moves from this past week:
Claire Bramley was named CFO at Teradata, a multi-cloud data platform for enterprise analytics, effective June 14, 2021. Bramley most recently served as global controller at HP Inc., where she’s had an almost 15-year career. At Teradata, Bramley succeeds Mark Culhane, who will step down as CFO on June 13 but remain at the company until the end of June to assist in the transition.
Brian D. Cullen was named SVP and CFO at Verso Corporation, a North American producer of coated papers, effective June 16, 2021. Prior to joining Verso, Cullen served as U.S. VP of finance and controller for McDonald’s Corporation. He will succeed Allen J. Campbell, who will retire from Verso but remain until the end of June to assist with the transition.
Katherine Fogertey was named CFO at Shake Shack, Inc., effective June 14, 2021. Fogertey joins Shake Shack, following more than 15 years at Goldman Sachs, becoming lead analyst covering the restaurant sector.
Mike Recupero was named CFO at GameStop Corp., effective July 12, 2021. Recupero spent more than 17 years at Amazon, most recently serving as CFO of its North American consumer business.
Overheard
“I think these longer-term stays for business travelers are probably the future of business. And I think one- to two-night stays are probably going to not quite come back.”
—Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky discussed post-pandemic travel during Fortune’s Global Forum conference on Tuesday.
