Fast Company May/June 2021

Even before the pandemic brought to a head the challenges faced by essential employees (low wages, inadequate safety gear, nonexistent sick leave), a diverse set of workers started to rebel against decades of management policies that expand profits and enrich shareholders, often at the expense of workers and their families. Fight for $15-a coalition of fast-food workers, home health aides, childcare providers, airport workers, retail employees, and adjunct college professors-has been pushing for a $15-per-hour national minimum wage since 2012, and has successfully lobbied for higher hourly wages in at least eight states. Teachers staged walkouts and gained concessions on pay and health benefits. Google employees demanded greater accountability from management on issues ranging from diversity to ethics, culminating in the formation of a union at the beginning of this…

Maya Angelou walked so that Amanda Gorman could run so that I... could do burpees. In late January, I listened to the disembodied voice of 22-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate Gorman reciting her inauguration poem, “The Hill We Climb,” as I sweated it out during a boutique Zoom fitness class led by a chipper instructor. It wasn’t my first experience working out to a social justice soundtrack: Years ago, I’d listened to a recording of Martin Luther King Jr. play during a SoulCycle class (the instructor even turned off all the lights for dramatic effect). Both times, I was overcome by the absurdity of the situation and laughed out loud. I’m fairly sure that tighter abs were not part of the dream that either orator had in mind. I had barely returned…

When you get down to it, Labcorp, a global life sciences company based in Burlington, North Carolina, does one thing: it helps patients and healthcare providers make informed decisions. It achieves this through its combined diagnostics and drug development platform, which has an enormous impact on the health and well-being of millions of people around the world. What’s more, the company’s work is exactly what is needed to combat a global pandemic. “We have over 70,000 employees around the world, and every one of them wanted to do everything they could to help get the world through the pandemic,” says Adam Schechter, Labcorp’s chairman and CEO. Within days of the coronavirus’s emergence in the U.S., the company had mobilized a dedicated COVID-19 response team to help expedite testing and treatments. In early…

THE SEGMENTS AMBER RUFFIN performs on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers “Amber’s Minute of Fury,” “Amber Says What,” and “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell”-showcase her infectious energy and ability to satirize hot-button issues. They also earned the 42-year-old her own weekly half-hour of TV, The Amber Ruffin Show, which debuted last fall on Peacock, NBC’s streaming channel. She’s using the opportunity to be as off-the-wall as she wants, and she thanks a new generation on social media for that. “I can sneak my weirdness in there, and there’s cover for me because there are people doing weirder things than I am,” she says. She’s also cowriting Broadway’s Some Like It Hot for 2022-and loving it. “When you are in a happy, nice place to create, you go wild.” Here’s how she’s…

2001 Begins performing improv at venues including Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, iO Theater in Chicago, and Second City in Denver (with Jenny Hagel). 2012 Becomes a regular on Derek Waters’s Comedy Central show, Drunk History, retelling such major events as the integration of Little Rock high school. 2013 Auditions for Saturday Night Live. SNL writer Seth Meyers hires her for his new show; she becomes the first Black woman to join a major late-night-TV writers room. 2018 Cowrites a new rendition of The Wiz, staged at St. Louis’s outdoor theater, the Muny, starring Danyel Fulton. 2019 Writes for HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, created by Robin Thede and executive produced by Issa Rae. 2020 The Amber Ruffin Show debuts on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock; in March, the network renews the series. 1/21 Releases You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey, a New…

Data visualization by Chelsea Schiff • RELEASED/ DEVELOPED ° IN DEVELOPMENT In the world of Wattpad, no genre is too niche. The user-generated publishing platform, boasting more than 90 million monthly readers, now has both a film and TV arm and a print division, which the company has used to catapult dozens of untraditional stories to box-office and best-seller success. In 2021, the platform was acquired by South Korean tech giant Naver for $600 million-a price buoyed by Wattpad’s ability to analyze its content down to which lines of a story readers like best and predict what will resonate. “Our audience data allows us to explore that,” says Aron Levitz, general manager of Wattpad Studios. Here’s a sampling of its 90 projects in development.…