Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner acquire Life magazine, Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled new AI rules for government agencies, and four female CEOs discuss issues affecting women in Asia at the Fortune Innovation Forum.
– Top takeaways. While the number of female CEOs slowly but steadily inch upward in the U.S., the Asia-Pacific region is also home to more and more influential female business leaders.
Many of my Fortune colleagues spent the past few days hearing from several of those CEOs at the Fortune Innovation Forum in Hong Kong. Below are some key takeaways from the gathering of top global executives.
– Jane Sun is CEO of Trip.com, the Shanghai-based travel service provider behind Skyscanner, Ctrip, and its eponymous website. Running a business with $6.2 billion in annual revenue makes Sun one of the few female chiefs in China Big Tech.
At the Fortune Innovation Forum, she told attendees how when she first joined the company almost two decades ago, she had a young baby at home. Today, Trip.com offers employee benefits such as stipends for new parents, taxi rides for pregnant workers, birthday gifts up to $1,400 for children until the age of 5, and egg-freezing—all relatively unusual (and in the case of egg-freezing, sometimes controversial) in China, where much government attention is on the country’s falling birth rate. “If you don’t like it, you don’t need to use it,” Sun said of her company’s benefits.
– Joey Wat, the CEO of KFC and Taco Bell operator Yum China, joined Sun for this conversation. Yum China’s most impactful benefit, she said, has been allowing employees to add their parents to their health insurance plans. “A lot of women are responsible not only for their children but for their parents. It’s very challenging,” Wat explained.
– Bonnie Chan is the CEO of stock exchange HKEX. The exchange instituted a rule that listed companies must not have single-gender boards by the end of 2024. With the deadline approaching, HKEX hasn’t decided whether or how to punish firms that don’t meet the requirement yet. But Chan suggested that Hong Kong lagging behind other major financial hubs on this issue could be attributed to the number of family-owned businesses. “In Chinese tradition, we always favor the son,” Chan said.
– Walmart International CEO Kathryn McLay also joined the Fortune Innovation Forum group in Hong Kong. She talked about Walmart’s continued adoption of generative AI and its application to different growth markets—more in digital-native India than in Mexico, where the retailer is building in-store kiosks for consumers who don’t have internet access. In China, 48% of transactions are now digital compared to less than 5% in 2019. “Customers can expect a more delightful experience in retail,” she said. “We’re just only on the cusp of that now.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Back to Life. Bedford Media, the media group cofounded by Karlie Kloss and her husband Joshua Kushner, acquired Life magazine and plans on resuscitating the publication more than 20 years after it was shut down. Kloss, who also oversaw Bedford's acquisition of i-D Magazine from Vice Media last year, said that she and her husband “see Life as an uplifting and unifying voice in a chaotic media landscape.” The Hollywood Reporter
- Agency protection. Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Thursday that government agencies using AI tools now must prove by December that those tools "do not endanger the rights and safety of the American people." The new rule also requires that these agencies hire chief AI officers to oversee their AI use and keep a yearly record of their AI systems and any possible risks. Fortune
- Whiff of acquisition. Glossier, founded by Emily Weiss and led by CEO Kyle Leahy, is reportedly in “deep” talks with fashion conglomerate LVMH as it looks for a potential acquirer. Sources who spoke to Puck News say that the owner of Dior and Louis Vuitton is particularly interested in Glossier’s wildly successful fragrance line. Puck News
- Drinking problems. Women who drink eight or more alcoholic beverages a week are as much as 51% more likely to develop coronary heart disease than those who have one or two drinks per week, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente Northern California. Those who had three or more alcoholic beverages per day, however, were 68% more likely to develop the disease than those who had just one per day. The Washington Post
- Sold short. A group of women retail executives spoke to ModernRetail about why more women are leaving their CEO roles, saying they're left burdened with higher expectations and less control than their male counterparts. Tokki founder and CEO and former Julep cosmetics CEO Jane Park described how the women executives she knows do not receive the same second chances that men do and are often left without support when their company hits a rough patch. Denise Conroy, a former C-suite exec who now coaches executives, described her own experiences with investors who didn't take her seriously and board members who wanted her to ask their permission for otherwise normal decisions. ModernRetail
ON MY RADAR
AI hustlers stole women’s faces to put in ads. The law can’t help them The Washington Post
With this ring, I unwed New York Times
When it comes to the office siren trend, are women in on the joke? Vogue
PARTING WORDS
"The audience is not looking for a performance. You’re not an actor. They’re looking for a connection, and that’s what we’re trying to do every day."
—CNN's Abby Phillip on her approach to news
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