Dick Fuld, Disgraced Former CEO Of Lehman Brothers, Makes Bizarre Comeback

Dick Fuld, part villain and part unforgivably very confused bystander to the financial crisis in the eyes of most -- and a victim of the financial crisis to himself -- made a bizarre comeback at a conference in New York on Thursday.

In his first public appearance (other than sworn congressional testimony) since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Fuld blamed regulators, borrowers and rumors for the end of the 158-year-old, $47 billion firm he led. It was a “perfect storm” that sank Lehman, not his own leadership or decisions, Fuld said, while touting Lehman’s “success” to the audience. He also claimed that every one of the 27,000 employees who once worked for Lehman had been a risk manager, because they owned stock in the firm.

Lehman’s September 2008 collapse was the first of many bank failures and market seizures that fall. It sparked the financial crisis that ended in a $416 billion bank bailout and left the country mired in the Great Recession.

Fuld's comments were initially carried live on the financial news network CNBC, but the feed was pulled by conference organizers part way through his remarks. Technically, Fuld was at the conference to deliver a keynote address titled, "How Emerging Growth Companies Can Succeed in Today's Capital Markets: Perspectives from My Journey." His comments, however, were a well-rehearsed if less-than-convincing defense of his own actions leading up to the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

He denied that Lehman was a failed company in September 2008 and intimated that he and the firm were victims of a conspiracy centered around former competitors in regulatory positions with a vendetta against him. Fuld, nicknamed the “Gorilla” during his career for his overly aggressive style, seemed temperamentally unchanged, telling one conference questioner, “Why don’t you bite me?”

Months prior to Lehman’s fall, Fuld had declared that “the worst of the impact of the financial markets is behind us” and pushed subordinates to take more risk, sidelining or firing those who disagreed with him.

Fuld is now working at his own firm, which is focused on the kind of small deals he would have scoffed at as CEO of a massive investment bank. The venue itself was an indication of his fall: an otherwise barely noteworthy conference focused on selling shares in tiny public companies.

How California's Ethical Nail Salons Can Teach New York To Clean Up Its Act

Guests enjoy Smirnoff Ice and a Nail Salon at the Ladies With Game Tailgate at The Diageo Liquid Cellar on January 29, 2014 in New York City. (Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images)

When Anthony Pham read The New York Times’ expose about the exploitation of manicurists in New York, the California nail salon owner was at once horrified and comforted by how clear-cut the fix could be.

“To me, it’s so obvious,” Pham, owner of Spa Elysee in Burlingame, where workers start out earning $11 an hour, told The Huffington Post. “I can say with absolute conviction that the state of New York needs to tighten up and make their licensing process much more strict than it is.”

After a 13-month investigation, which involved interviewing nail salon workers and owners across ethnicities and languages, The Times unveiled a laundry list of offenses, which included wage theft, physical abuse and the health consequences of being exposed to toxic products. While the expose shocked readers into boycotting nail salons, and moved Mayor Bill de Blasio into declaring a Nail Salon Day of Action on Thursday, advocates who have been addressing injustices like these for more than a decade have warned against taking drastic, and potentially harmful, steps.

They say it will require coaxing workers out of the shadows, demanding more oversight among politicians and developing a trusting collaborative of nail salons, similar to a successful program in California.

San Mateo supervisor Don Horshey present Spa Elysee with the Healthy Nail Salon award.

“It’s really important for workers who are affected to be centered in the conversation,” Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, a group that focuses on Asian Americans’ reproductive, economic health and education rights, told The Huffington Post. “They have insight into what’s most wrong and what they most need, and what will be most effective policy making.”

This very concept of taking into consideration nail salon workers’ pressing needs has helped clean up the industry in California.

"This Isn't About Boycotting Salons"

After Asian Health Services, a community health center and other advocacy groups took inventory of the health “epidemic” nail salon workers faced, they developed the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative in 2005.

A conglomerate of manicurists, nonprofits, justice and environmental organizations, the collaborative aimed to develop a program that would reward salon owners for prioritizing workers' health and safety. Nail technicians are believed to have miscarriages, develop cancer and other conditions on the job due to exposure to toxins.

The scrappy organization, which has only four full-time staff members, is also involved in community organizing and advocacy work on the policy level.

“This isn’t about boycotting nail salons,” Julia Liou, co-founder of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative and planning and development director at Asian Health Services, told HuffPost. “It’s about how we can come together and help this industry become healthier and safer.”

One of the collaborative’s most effective measures was developing a healthy nail salon recognition program. In 2009, the group devised a three-part certification campaign that would earn participating nail salons a visible placard to place on the window, so that customers could feel confident knowing that the workers’ health isn’t being jeopardized.

Throwing Out The Toxicity

The program requires salons to dump any nail polishes containing the “Toxic Trio,” which is formaldehyde, toluene, and dibutyl phthalate. This move was particularly critical considering that repeated inhalation of such ingredients can be harmful, yet companies aren’t required to list the contents of their products on the bottle.

California's chemical regulators randomly sampled dozens of professional grade nail polishes in 2012 that claimed to be free of a "toxic trio" of dangerous substances and found that many still contained the chemicals in high levels. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

“Even though you’re in that profession you can have huge blind spots,” said Pham, a Vietnamese-American who grew up in the salon he eventually took over from his mother. “We were just oblivious. Why would companies produce a nail polish that’s dangerous? If someone is selling something to human beings, why would they include harmful ingredients?”

The program also requires workers to wear protective gloves at all times and masks when they’re working with acrylics. Salons also must install ventilation systems, which vacuum out fine dust particles in the air.

The air filtration systems cost about $800, but Pham was able to secure one for free since he was one of the first salons to get involved in the program. The county of San Mateo footed the bill and Liou hopes to get additional government funding to provide the system for any salon that wants to participate.

A Certification Program To Ensure Ethical Practices

The certification program, which is currently available in San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda County, City of Santa Monica and Santa Clara County, was initially met with some skepticism.

“People were very scared,” Liou said. “It’s going to be really expensive for us,” was a common concern she heard over and over.

But what Liou uncovered over time was that most nail salon owners wanted to run ethically responsible businesses. But as is typically the case in New York City, the owners –- who are often immigrants just like many of their workers -- struggle with English and just didn’t have the information readily accessible to take the necessary steps.

To ameliorate any concerns, the collaborative delivers a training packet that’s translated into a number of languages and holds a one-day seminar for every employee in the salon, so that everyone involved can fully grasp the protocol involved.

Considering that his ventilation system was covered, Pham said the process wasn’t cost prohibitive.

He estimates having spent about $300 on discarding old, toxic polishes and forks over about $40 a month for protective gloves and masks.

To date, 55 salons have been certified. That figure is expected to climb to 75 by fall, Liou said.

And while the recognition program doesn’t outright address wage issues, Pham noted that any salons that are eager to protect their workers’ health, likely aren’t interested in undercutting their employees.

But getting paid paltry wages is also so much less of an overall concern in California, where nail technicians are mandated to undergo a rigorous 300-hour licensing process.

A nail technician at Spa Elysee gives a customer a pedicure.

Nail salons also undergo strict inspections two to three times a year. Those that are found guilty of violating of standard procedures are fined heavily and it’s “very, very easy” for a salon to have its license revoked, Pham added.

Worker Training

While manicurists in New York are technically required to be licensed, The Times found that many simply work without them, and the licenses are easily bought, sold or forged.

Taking on inexperienced workers was one of the oft-repeated justifications for not paying workers a living wage.

The Times learned that workers often first pay about $100 to get in the door and then work for free until the salon owner deems them worthy enough to earn an hourly wage.

Since manicurists are considered “tipped workers” in New York City, owners are permitted to compensate a little less than the $8.75 minimum wage. But many earn far less. One woman who was profiled got under $3 an hour.

The average wage for a nail technician in California is $9.88, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

But Pham says that due to the extensive licensing process, pay is even more competitive in the industry.

Employees just starting out at Pham’s salon earn $100 a day, and put in about nine hours. They keep all of their tips and earn a $10 bonus if a tech completes $300 in services.

He said a “lower end” salary for a nail technician is a daily rate of $80 to $85.

Pham said about 20 to 30 customers come through Spa Elysee’s door every day, where clients can also get waxing and facial services, but the salon doesn’t actually charge that much more than those in New York City.

The average manicure in New York costs $10.50, according to The Times.

Pham said he charges $15. A manicure-pedicure combination runs $30.

New York Already Ups Its Game

While New York appears to have taken a page out of California’s healthy nail book, advocates say politicians needs to devote additional resources to make effective systemic changes.

“We need politicians to commit to staying around for long haul,” Yeung said, “or else what we’re looking at is tissue paper when you cut yourself. It’s not going to work.”

Spa Elysee hosts healthy nail salon event.

The day after The Times piece ran, Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a number of emergency measures, which included requiring salons to post signs informing workers of their rights. They notify employees, for example, that it’s illegal to work for no pay and that they’re required to wear gloves to protect themselves.

Hundreds of volunteers hit the streets on Thursday to dole out fliers further explaining nail salon workers’ rights. And while the agencies involved in the task force said they won’t ask workers about their legal status, advocates say part of the rehabilitative process needs to involve engaging with every worker, undocumented or not, in a meaningful way.

Volunteers distribute flyers in multiple languages about health concerns, labor practices, regulations and wages at nail salons, to commuters outside a subway station in New York on May 21, 2015.

On a federal level, advocates want to see toxic ingredients regulated for safety.

The Patron's Power

In terms of what concerned customers do, advocates say they need to recognize the invaluable power of their voices.

They say clients need to approach owners and ask about their tipping policies, breaks for workers and request the salon only carry non-toxic products, Yeung said. If customers notice something suspicious, they should contact a trafficking hotline and they should contact their legislators asking that their cities replicated California’s healthy nail salon program.

“You’ve taken care of my beauty needs and I care about you,” Yeung said of how customers should view their relationship with their nail technician. “It’s almost a sisterhood. We have to support each other.”

This story has been updated to clarify the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative's healthy nail salon program.

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Women Need To Listen To This Advice Given To Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

You may think the advice that one super-successful corporate titan gives to another super-successful almost-CEO is something you can safely ignore.

Yet the last thing that Google founder Sergey Brin told Marissa Mayer right before she ascended to the throne of chief executive of Yahoo is something we all need to hear. Especially women.

In an interview with Patricia Sellers at Fortune, Mayer dished about the guidance Brin gave her in the minutes before Yahoo announced her appointment back in 2012. She said that Brin gave her all sorts of minor advice that she later wound up acting on -- like changing the Yahoo logo, one of the first things she did as CEO.

But as she was headed out the door, Brin called her back, Mayer told Sellers. "'Marissa, wait! Don’t forget to be bold,'" he said.

That’s it. That’s the advice women need to hear. Because many of us have confidence issues. I reported earlier Wednesday on a new study that offered up more evidence of the problem. The study revealed that female college students are less confident about their job and salary prospects than men.

It is the latest brick in a hard wall of evidence that shows women hold themselves back at work by not aiming higher. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg talked about the issue in her highly publicized book “Lean In,” and the Atlantic published a long piece last year called the Confidence Gap that detailed a lot of depressing examples of women’s propensity to be very much not bold.

In one anecdote, authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman tell the story of their friend who supervises two direct reports: Rebecca and Robert. Rebecca plugs away at her job, diligently doing good work. When she needs to talk to the boss, she makes an appointment. She doesn’t speak up in client meetings. When she gets tough feedback, sometimes she cries. Meanwhile, Robert is at the boss’s office door constantly with new ideas. A lot of them are bad, but he doesn’t seem to care.

Kay and Shipman wrote:

Our friend had come to rely on and value Rebecca, but she had a feeling it was Robert’s star that would rise. It was only a matter of time before one of his many ideas would strike the right note, and he’d be off and running—probably, our friend was beginning to fear, while Rebecca was left behind, enjoying the respect of her colleagues but not a higher salary, more responsibilities, or a more important title.

Of course, as the authors note, women are often in a double-bind when it comes to boldness. Women who are bossy and decisive at work are often labeled as "bitches." But things are changing, thanks to people like Sandberg and Mayer herself.

We can also thank some great new female comics. In a recent episode of “Inside Amy Schumer” called “I’m Sorry,” there’s a hilarious takedown of the female propensity to undersell ourselves and apologize for no reason. It involves a fake panel of women geniuses who step over themselves with self-deprecating nonsense.

You should check it out. Meanwhile, I’m so sorry for taking up your time with this.

Jack Ma Says Women Executives Are Alibaba's 'Special Sauce'

HANGZHOU, China -- While Silicon Valley grapples with a major gender gap in its workforce, Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba, said Wednesday that women are the "secret sauce" behind his company’s success.

The proclamation came during Alibaba’s first-ever Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship. The two-day event in Hangzhou, China, included speeches from women as varied as Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba and Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s founder and editor-in-chief.

Since starting Alibaba out of his apartment in 1999, both Ma and his company have grown to be giants in China's tech landscape. The business now stands as the country's biggest online marketplace, and has garnered Ma a net worth of over $24 billion. Alibaba is so prominent that over 60 percent of packages delivered in China are from its orders, according to a 2014 New York Times article.

The company was using the event this week to promote women's entrepreneurship, as well as its own relatively strong record on gender equality. According to Alibaba, over 40 percent of all its employees are women. Women make up nearly 35 percent of the company's high-level managers and one-third of its founders.

While those numbers fall short of total gender parity, they still stand out when compared with most Silicon Valley firms.

Several of Alibaba's high-level female employees spoke at the event, including Zhang Wei, Alibaba Group senior vice president, and Lucy Peng, Alibaba Group chief people officer and CEO of a financial services subsidiary. Zhang acted as host throughout the day on Wednesday, while Peng gave a speech on how she evolved at the company and learned to overrule male colleagues.

Ma spoke at the end of the event, and fielded questions from both fans and reporters. He said women approach communication and problem-solving in a way that's particularly important for a service and retail company like Alibaba.

“Men think about themselves more; women think about others more,” Ma said. “Women think about taking care of their parents, their children.”

That essentialist language might raise some eyebrows in feminist circles, as would distinctions that Ma occasionally laid out between men who operate according to logic and women who act more on intuition. But Ma frequently invoked ancient Chinese philosophy, particularly Taoist concepts of yin and yang, in describing his vision of the strengths that women have brought to Alibaba.

"I feel proud that more than 34 percent of senior management are women. They really make this company’s yin and yang balanced," Ma said. "Women balance the logic and the instinct. I would say this is the 'secret sauce' of the company."

Asked about the gender gap in Silicon Valley companies, Ma said that while he doesn't know the numbers, he believes that the most successful companies likely make gender parity a priority.

At least one 2014 report by Fenwick and West appears to bear out Ma’s prediction. The report shows that while Silicon Valley lags far behind in gender equality, the top 15 tech firms do significantly better than the top 100 when it comes to including women in the highest leadership posts.

Big Banks Plead Guilty To Market Manipulation, Will Pay $5.8 Billion

The age of multibillion-dollar bank fines with no admission of wrongdoing is over. The Justice Department announced Wednesday morning that five banks pleaded guilty to market manipulation, while also paying billions of dollars in fines.

Barclays, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and the Royal Bank of Scotland admitted to illegally distorting foreign exchange markets. The banks formed what they called "The Cartel" and aimed to set a key currency marker, known as "the fix," at mutually beneficial values.

The fix is set every day at 4 p.m. London time and is used in the more than $5 trillion currency market to determine the price of trades and the value of large institutional holdings. Traders at the banks used instant messaging chat rooms to discuss where to set the fix.

In addition to admitting guilt, the banks will also pay fines. Barclays will pay $650 million, Citigroup $925, million J.P. Morgan $550 million and RBS $395 million. Barclays will pay another $1.3 billion to New York State, federal and U.K. regulators.

The Justice Department said it was charging the banks' parent companies because the wrongdoing was pervasive, and that the banks' punishment was "fitting considering the long-running and egregious nature of their anticompetitive conduct." To put the fines in context, in 2014, Barclay's net income was $3.5 billion, Citigroup's was $7.3 billion, J.P. Morgan's was $21.8 billion and RBS' was $3.9 billion.

A fifth bank, UBS, pleaded guilty to manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is called Libor. Libor is the most important international interest rate benchmark. UBS will pay $545 million in fines to the Justice Department and Federal Reserve. The value of more than $300 trillion in debt is tied to Libor.

The five banks will pay a further $1.6 billion in fines to the Federal Reserve.

This story has been updated to include more information from the Justice Department and the 2014 income of the banks mentioned.

Here's What A Creative Neighborhood Looks Like

Innovation and creativity are the basic engines of economic development in cities, regions and nations. But what makes some places more innovative than others? How do certain neighborhoods come to specialize in different types of creativity?

Read the whole story at Citylab

Apple CEO Tim Cook Urges GWU Graduates To Develop Moral Compass

Apple CEO Tim Cook urged graduating George Washington University students to follow their values and find a job that helps them do good in a commencement speech delivered Sunday.

Cook talked of justice and injustice in a speech that paid homage to Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, delivered to a crowd on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., VentureBeat reported. The university expected about 25,000 people to attend the commencement exercises, according to the outlet.

The CEO mentioned the civil rights leader three times in his 20-minute speech, and said that King, along with Kennedy, had been one of his childhood heroes.

Cook, who grew up in Alabama, shared a story about his first visit to the nation's capital in 1977, at the age of 16. On the trip, Cook met with then-President Carter right after meeting Alabama's governor, George Wallace, who had opposed desegregation in the '60s. (Wallace is perhaps best remembered for his 1963 inaugural address that called for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.")

“Meeting my governor was not an honor for me,” Cook told the graduates. “Shaking his hand felt like a betrayal of my own beliefs. It felt wrong, like I was selling a piece of my soul.”

It was very different from meeting America's then-president, Cook said.

“Carter was kind and compassionate. He held the most powerful job in the world, and had not sacrificed any of his humanity,” he said. “It was clear to me that one was right and one was wrong."

Cook ended with a call for graduates to live their values and change the world -- and said that working at Apple had helped him do just that:

We believe that a company that has values and acts on them can really change the world. And an individual can too. That can be you. That must be you. Graduates, your values matter. They are your North Star. Otherwise it’s just a job -- and life is too short for that. ... You don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well. It’s a false choice, today more than ever.

Your challenge is to find work that pays the rent, puts food on the table, and lets you do what is right and good and just.

Words to aspire to.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated incorrectly that Cook spoke about John F. Kennedy. He spoke about Robert F. Kennedy.

The States With The Most Stay-At-Home Fathers

Not too long ago, it was practically unheard of for a father to raise his children full-time instead of working for money. In the 1970s, only six U.S. men identified themselves as stay-at-home parents. Not 6 percent -- six men, in the entire country.

Last year, by contrast, an estimated 1.9 million fathers remained home with the kids -- accounting for 16 percent of the stay-at-home parent population, according to a HuffPost analysis of U.S. Census data.

That’s definitely a huge step forward for fathers seeking to shed the stigma that still lingers around the idea of a man as primary caretaker. But the figure comes with a significant caveat: Most fathers aren't staying home voluntarily. According to one prominent researcher, 80 percent of those 1.9 million dads would be working outside the home if they could.

The reasons why any parent might stay home are complex and often very personal. The job market is certainly a factor, but the cost of child care and cultural issues also likely play a key role, says Noelle Chesley, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has researched stay-at-home fathers.

The Huffington Post took a state-by-state look at men as stay-at-home caregivers, as seen in the map and table in this article. We found some instances where high proportions of dad caregivers seemed to correspond with high unemployment rates. In West Virginia, for example, where men account for an estimated 30 percent of stay-at-home parents, the unemployment rate is 6.6 percent -- well above the national average of 5.4 percent -- and the percentage of adults who are employed is the lowest in the nation.

Yet elsewhere, the correlation did not hold. In South Dakota, for example, 39 percent of stay-at-home parents are fathers, but unemployment is comparatively low.

The very definition of "stay-at-home dad" is also up for debate. The Census Bureau defines the term very narrowly, excluding same-sex partners, single dads and parents of kids who are older than 15, as well the fathers in families where both parents do not work.

Our analysis used a broader definition: any father who's been unemployed for at least a year, and who is also at home with a child or children under 18. With this approach, we sought to replicate the methodology used by the Pew Research Center in a 2014 report.

[Click the column header to sort the data]

AOL CEO: Verizon Deal Will 'Extend The Tarmac' For Mobile

NEW YORK -- AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said Tuesday morning that the company's $4.4 billion acquisition by Verizon would bolster AOL's hope of dominating the burgeoning and lucrative mobile ad market.

Comparing to the company’s mission to an airplane’s flight path, Armstrong said selling to Verizon was not changing direction but, rather, “extending the tarmac.”

“This is not a deal done out of necessity,” he said before a crowd of staffers gathered in the fourth-floor reception room of the company’s Manhattan headquarters. “This is a deal done out of where the future is overall.”

According to Armstrong, one benefit of the deal announced Tuesday morning will be that, thanks to AOL’s push to make its wide variety of media properties mobile-friendly, the merged company will have access to a huge amount of user data from those sites. And while Armstrong did not mention it, data could also flow in the other direction, from legacy Verizon businesses to AOL media properties. The elusive end goal for tech companies is to squeeze every possible penny out of, or 'monetize,' the data they collect. Monetizing data generally means sharing it with other companies, which tends to make the privacy-minded users who generate that data uncomfortable. Now, Verizon and AOL will be able to monetize their data without sharing it with outside parties.

Though Armstrong insisted Verizon wanted to buy AOL mostly for its content properties -- which include The Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch -- many have speculated that the company’s newly launched automated ad platform, AOL One, is the real prize. AOL earned $995 million from display and search ads on its own properties last year. The company made almost as much -- $856 million -- selling ads for third-party sites, according to Fortune. Still, Armstrong said all editorial brands were included in the deal, allaying worries about spinoffs, at least in the near term.

The deal may also boost the companies' work around mobile video.

AOL began investing heavily in video two years ago, when ad sales for online video in the U.S. hit $2.8 billion, a 19 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That year, the company bought the programmatic video ad platform Adap.tv -- which became a cornerstone of AOL One. A month later, HuffPost launched HuffPost Live, the publication’s streaming video network.

“Mobile is the centerpiece,” Armstrong said. “We need to be on every single screen.”

Verizon, which streams television channels through its FiOS division, also has a hand in the lucrative live-sports business with the exclusive NFL Mobile app.

“You’re going to be at a company that does everything from NFL live games to HuffPost Live,” Armstrong said.

He said the deal was completed just after midnight, hours before the public announcement was made. It began as an operational deal, but became a merger. If the acquisition gets the green light from regulators, the deal will close before the end of summer, Armstrong said.

"This deal,” he said, “puts us at the big table.”

Jenny Che and Damon Beres contributed reporting.

Verizon To Buy AOL In $4.4 Billion Deal

Verizon announced Tuesday morning that it plans to buy AOL for $4.4 billion.

The all-cash deal between the telecom giant and the owner of The Huffington Post will reportedly be completed this summer, pending regulatory approvals.

Lowell McAdam, Verizon chairman and CEO, said in a press release that the merger will help "provide a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers to deliver that premium customer experience."

"AOL has once again become a digital trailblazer, and we are excited at the prospect of charting a new course together in the digitally connected world," McAdam stated. "At Verizon, we've been strategically investing in emerging technology, including Verizon Digital Media Services and OTT, that taps into the market shift to digital content and advertising. AOL's advertising model aligns with this approach, and the advertising platform provides a key tool for us to develop future revenue streams."

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, who is expected to continue to lead the company once the deal goes through, emailed the staff with the news:

Tim Armstrong emails staff on Verizon deal: pic.twitter.com/lTf2x0QZLA

— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) May 12, 2015

Armstrong also noted that the deal would mean better wages and benefits for AOL employees.

"For you this means growth, it means mobile, and it means compensation that will be equal or better to your AOL compensation. Your benefits will not change in 2015. We will eventually go on Verizon’s benefit plan, but that won’t happen until 2016 or later and we will work with Verizon to make sure the benefits are strong and cover important areas of people's lives," Armstrong wrote. "Your job and what you do on a daily basis should be enhanced by the market opportunity this deal is targeted to capture. The simple answer to the question of 'what does this mean for you?' should be, 'I just got more resources, more support and more growth opportunity.'"

AOL shares rose 18% in premarket trading to $50.27, the Wall Street Journal reported. Verizon shares fell 1.6% to $49.

This is a developing story. More to come...

We Need To Stop Pretending Work-Life Balance Is A Woman's Issue

It’s time for everyone to come out of the closet.

Not that closet. I’m talking about the white-collar trap where those of us who wish to have lives outside of the office hide our true feelings and instead fake like we’re working all the time. Most of us have a foot in that closet, pretending to some extent that being tethered to our email 24/7 has somehow freed us up to have personal lives.

This thought hit home after reading some research about a prominent consulting firm where many men pretend to work 80-hour weeks, so that they are still regarded as star employees.

These men have the same kind of work-family balance issues that women face, but the guys' problems get a lot less attention. And that's a shame.

“Work-life balance issues aren’t just women’s issues. Even in elite jobs, men are experiencing challenges at the same rate as women, but because we expect different things from men and women, men develop different strategies,” Erin Reid, an assistant professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business who conducted this study, told The Huffington Post.

Reid and other researchers interviewed 82 consultants at the firm, which she's dubbed AGM (a pseudonym). She also looked at consultants’ performance reviews and talked to former employees. Reid wrote about her findings in the Harvard Business Review and in a longer paper for the journal Organization Science. They were later reported by the New York Times.

The culture at AGM, like many big consulting firms and law firms, is all about putting in the hours. Consultants are expected to commit themselves wholly to the work and be available at any time to both clients and the firm to get the job done: 60 to 80-hour workweeks are the norm.

One consultant puts it this way in Reid’s paper:

You know AGM people, we’re on our BlackBerries. We’re thinking about our work 24/7. I mean, maybe you tune out for a little while here and there, but AGM people work all the time, all the time. I mean, you wake up at night, you’re dreaming about it. The first thing you do is you pick up your BlackBerry, you’re on it through the morning. You get to the office, you’re working through the day, you sit at your desk, you know, you’re cancelling plans.

The more of a committed, extreme player you are, the bigger your rewards, the better your performance rating and the quicker you’re promoted.

Lots has been written about how this kind of culture punishes women, particularly mothers. Less attention has been paid to how it affects men.

“The main takeaway seems to be that these jobs require you to work all the time, and women have difficulty but men don’t. That didn’t resonate with people that I knew in my life,” Reid told HuffPost this week, in explaining why she did the study. “The men I know aren’t super happy working all the time.”

A majority of the male consultants Reid interviewed were miserable with the always-on mentality. Some complained “of children crying when they missed their soccer games, of poor health and substance addictions caused by how they worked, and of a general sense of feeling 'overworked and underfamilied,'” Reid writes.

The women at the firm -- mothers especially -- weren’t quite expected to work as hard as the men. The HR department had formal policies to help them -- women asked for reduced work hours, took maternity leave, etc. Those accommodations came with penalties, according to Reid's study. Women who asked for flexibility weren't considered “true ideal workers,” she writes. “They were consequently marginalized within the firm.”

The men who asked for formal help were also dinged. One asked for a three-month unpaid paternity leave, something his employer is legally bound to offer thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act. “I felt like this was the only time in my career I would be able to do this,” he told Reid. “But the original reaction I actually got inside of the firm was 'oh no, you can’t take three months off.'"

He settled for six weeks unpaid -- and worked hard the rest of the year. Didn’t help. He was passed over for a promotion because, his supervisor said, they couldn’t evaluate his performance that year with such a big gap in his employment.

Many other men at AGM -- and a few women -- figured out a new way to get the balance they wanted: faking it. They figured out how to structure their work so it looked like they were putting in 80 hours -- but really were closer to 50.

Men found local clients that required less travel. They strategically emailed at off hours so it looked like they were pulling all-nighters or working weekends -- a maneuver I’m sure many of us can relate to.

One man described taking his family on a five-day ski trip -- on work time. From Reid's study:

“I skied five days last week. I took calls in the morning and in the evening but I was able to be there for my son when he needed me to be, and I was able to ski five days in a row,” he tells Reid. He clarified that these were work days, not vacation days: “No, no one knows where I am…. Those boundaries are only practical with my local client base.… Especially because we’re mobile, there are no boundaries.”

On Facebook, one of my friends was inspired by the fakers: “Women, here's what we can learn from men, don't ask for permission but do what you need to do to be successful at work and at home," she wrote when sharing the piece.

But maybe the path to success doesn’t start with everyone pretending that a 24/7 culture is OK and trying to fit their lives into it.

Imagine if more and more workers simply rebelled against the culture of face time? Or if firms like AGM started to understand that people can have lives outside the office -- and still be devoted workers.

“Organizations need to change,” said Reid, who has been hearing from lots of people for whom AGM's culture resonated all too well. Elite firms should perhaps not have the default expectation that workers put in 60-hour weeks and be available to travel at the drop of a hat, Reid said.

Still she doesn’t expect any changes at AGM. The firm may now understand it has a problem, but Reid said that it hasn't done much about it since she presented her results to the firm back in 2011.

The Way We Shop Has Completely Transformed In The Last 10 Years. Here's Why.

In 2005, shopping malls reigned supreme. There were a handful of online-only retailers, but they were nascent, at best.

A lot has changed over the last decade.

Now, the teeming centers that once drew urban and suburban shoppers are giving way to denser complexes built to house retail locations, commercial offices and residential space.

“Almost nobody is building malls. They are building ‘alls,’” said Paco Underhill, CEO of the retail consultancy Environsell, in an interview with The Huffington Post. “If you think of the typical American mall, how many have a grocery store? A drugstore? A hardware store? A place to get your laundry done? The answer is none of them.”

Younger consumers crave the convenience of stores within walking or biking distance of where they live. They want "alls," not traditional shopping malls.

“Many millennials would love to be in a place where they can live, work and shop and never have to step into their cars,” said Underhill.

Luxury malls, located in wealthy areas and containing mostly high-end retailers, have fared well since the Great Recession, but the wider industry is suffering. Nearly one-fifth of the country’s non-outdoor malls have vacancy rates of 10 percent or higher, according to The New York Times. The paper reports that over 3 percent of malls are thought to be dying, meaning that 40 percent or more of their stores are vacant. In 2006, that description applied to less than 1 percent of malls.

Underhill, a popular commentator on the future of retail, said that on Friday he will speak to a group of chief executives of the country’s biggest mall operators, explaining to them the importance of reconfiguring existing mall spaces to accommodate millennials' new, multifaceted demands.

"What we're watching is the better treatment of the art and science of building and managing commercial spaces," he said.

The rise of "alls" replacing malls looks likely to continue for the next decade or so.

“They’re essentially higher-end versions of strip malls,” Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at the market research firm Forrester Research, told HuffPost. “It’ll probably be like this for at least the next decade, if not the next two decades.”

Part of what has eroded the popularity of malls is the rise of the Internet -- a one-stop shop with every kind of inventory imaginable. Online shopping has skyrocketed since 2005.

“It’s a lot more Amazon now,” Mulpuru said. “That’s the single biggest difference.”

Last year, the fourth-quarter e-commerce sales in the United States topped $79.6 billion, up 14.6 percent from the same period in 2013, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Holiday season e-commerce sales have grown steadily since 2005.

Computers are much more sophisticated now than they were in 2005, of course -- and their users are, too. Plus, countless numbers of online retailers have cropped up in the past decade.

“In 2005, maybe there were 10 sites that sold discounted luxury goods, for example,” said Underhill. “Now there are more than 200.”

It remains to be seen whether traditional malls can regain their footing, but e-commerce, and the desire to live, work and shop all in the same close vicinity, seem likely to define retail in the decade to come.

Sheryl Sandberg Makes First Public Comment Since Husband's Death

On Tuesday, Sheryl Sandberg made her first public statement since her husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly while exercising on vacation in Mexico four days ago.

Hours after President Barack Obama wrote a stirring tribute on the White House’s official Facebook page, Sandberg responded to the post.

"Thank you President Barack Obama for this beautiful tribute -- and for your friendship to our family," she wrote. "Dave Goldberg admired you for your leadership, passion, and your deep love of sports."

Later that evening, Sandberg also shared a personal eulogy about her late husband in a Facebook post of her own, and thanked family and friends for their support.

"I met Dave nearly 20 years ago when I first moved to LA. He became my best friend," she wrote. "He showed me the internet for the first time, planned fun outings, took me to temple for the Jewish holidays, introduced me to much cooler music than I had ever heard."

She recalled their 11 years together as "the deepest love, happiest marriage, and truest partnership," ultimately rewarding with the birth of their two children. "He gave me the experience of being deeply understood, truly supported and completely and utterly loved – and I will carry that with me always," she wrote.

Read her full statement:

I want to thank all of our friends and family for the outpouring of love over the past few days. It has been...

Posted by Sheryl Sandberg on Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, also changed the cover photo of her Facebook page to a picture of her and her husband, who served as the chief executive of SurveyMonkey before his death.

Goldberg died Friday of a head injury after he was found on the floor of a gym at near the Mexican coastal town of Puerto Vallarta. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

UPDATE: This post has been updated to include Sandberg's latest statement.

Corinthian Colleges Files For Bankruptcy

Corinthian Colleges Inc. filed for bankruptcy on Monday, capping a year in which one of the nation's largest for-profit career school chains slowly collapsed under the watch of the U.S. Department of Education amid allegations that it had systematically deceived students with false graduation and job placement rates.

The company's collapse comes a week after it shut down its remaining 30 locations, leaving 16,000 students scrambling for options. At its peak, the company operated more than 120 colleges with more than 110,000 students across North America under the Everest, Wyotech and Heald brands, and investors valued the company at more than $1.4 billion.

Corinthian listed $19.2 million in assets and $143.1 million in debts in its Chapter 11 petition, filed Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Students at Corinthian's schools have received about $4 billion in federal student loans and $2 billion in federal grants since the start of the 2010-2011 academic year, according to Education Department data. Most of that money flowed to the school in the form of tuition and fees.

Corinthian fell out of favor with the Department of Education last summer over a paperwork dispute, leading to a cash crunch at the company after the department slowed its access to federal financial aid. The Education Department subsequently bailed out the company and brokered a sale of more than half of Corinthian's campuses to ECMC Group, one of the department's contracted debt collectors, in an effort to avoid a collapse that could have forced the department to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student loans given to Corinthian's students.

Meanwhile, the department watched from the sidelines as the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued the company for allegedly duping students with fake job placement promises. The department also shunned pleas by Senate Democrats and state prosecutors to forgive Corinthian students' federal student loans on the grounds that they were misled into enrolling in its schools.

As the company descended into insolvency, the Education Department allowed it to continue to enroll new students at its remaining campuses in an effort to keep its schools attractive to potential buyers. The Education Department's hand-picked monitor, Patrick Fitzgerald of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, had been keeping tabs on the company as part of its agreement with the department.

Federal and state authorities have accused Corinthian of lying about its graduation and job placement rates, misleading potential students into enrolling and stumping up tens of thousands of dollars to obtain allegedly questionable credentials. State prosecutors in Massachusetts, California and Wisconsin have separately sued the company, as has the federal consumer bureau. California settled similar accusations with the company in 2007.

"For too many students, Corinthian turned the American dream of higher ed into a nightmare of debt & despair," Rohit Chopra, the federal consumer bureau's top student loan official, said April 26 on Twitter.

On April 14, the Education Department piled on, accusing Corinthian's Heald schools of misleading students and accreditation agencies about its graduates’ employment rates. The department said it found 947 false job placement rates dating back to at least 2010, and alleged that Corinthian had shown a “blatant disregard” for the federal student loan program.

The Education Department levied a $30 million fine against the company that hasn't yet been paid. In light of Monday's bankruptcy filing, it's unclear whether the department will ever collect the fine or recoup any taxpayer funds from Corinthian.

Corinthian has denied wrongdoing. When it announced on April 26 that it would immediately shut down its remaining campuses, the company blamed federal and state regulators for its abrupt closure.

Students enrolled in Corinthian’s programs but who are unable to complete their studies as a result of the company’s shutdown are eligible to have their federal student loans canceled if they choose not to transfer any of their Corinthian credits to a new school. There are few transfer agreements in place between Corinthian’s schools and traditional public or nonprofit colleges. The Education Department told Corinthian students to consider more than a dozen for-profit schools whose owners are under state or federal investigation, a move that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) promptly criticized last week.

The school's sudden collapse is exactly what the Education Department has been trying to avoid since last summer. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's handling of Corinthian has given rise to a growing movement of so-called "debt strikers" who are refusing to repay the federal student loans they took out to attend Corinthian's schools.

Known as the "Corinthian 100," more than 100 Americans are publicly refusing to make monthly payments on debt they view as illegitimate in light of Corinthian's allegedly false statements and the Education Department's alleged failure to properly police the company's schools and protect students. They want the department to discharge all federal student loans held by current and former Corinthian students.

The Education Department could pass on much of the cost to Corinthian, but with the company claiming its debts exceed its assets by nearly $124 million, it’s unlikely the department would be able to recoup those losses.

Dorie Nolt, an Education Department spokeswoman, said the department would attempt to secure from Corinthian "as much of the $30 million as possible." She declined to answer further questions or make any department officials available for an interview.

The debt strikers were to meet with senior Education Department officials on Monday, but canceled their meeting after news reports indicated that the department had already ruled out the group's central demand.

"We refuse to be the pawns of a department that seeks to use the students’ campaign to give cover to their ongoing failures," the group said in a statement.

The Education Department's failure to police the company ultimately played a role in its demise.

In January 2014, about three months after the state of California sued Corinthian for allegedly misleading students about their future employment opportunities, Education Department officials sent Corinthian a letter requesting information about its reported job placement rates. At the time, the company was facing pressure from a growing group of state and federal authorities that wanted to probe Corinthian’s practices.

A few months later, in May 2014, Corinthian hired Barclays, the giant British bank, to explore a potential sale of its schools, according to a court filing by William Nolan, the company’s chief restructuring officer and a senior managing director at FTI Consulting.

The next month, the Education Department sent another letter to the company, this time claiming that the answers to its January letter were insufficient. The department forced the company to wait 21 days before it could access federal financial aid.

Nearly 90 percent of Corinthian's revenues came from taxpayer cash, Nolan said in the court filing, and the delay in accessing the funds came during the final month of the company’s fiscal year. The cash squeeze threatened the company’s survival, leading Corinthian to strike a deal with the Education Department in which the company would get immediate access to cash in exchange for eventually winding down its operations through sales and orderly shutdowns.

In November, the Education Department helped ECMC Group buy more than 50 campuses from Corinthian to be part of a new unit called Zenith Education Group. The sale was finalized in February of this year. ECMC and Zenith got access to about 40,000 students, or more than half of Corinthian’s 74,000 students as of March 31 of last year, according to Nolan.

Corinthian continued its efforts to sell its remaining campuses through Barclays and another consultant, Eduvize. Nolan said in the document that “several” potential buyers looked at the company, and Corinthian entered into negotiations with at least three of them for its Heald schools. Heald, which was founded more than 150 years ago and enrolled students in health care, business, technology and legal programs, was considered one of Corinthian’s most valuable assets.

But demands by federal and state authorities effectively blocked Corinthian’s sale of Heald, Nolan said. The Education Department wanted Heald’s future owners to reduce tuition by 20 percent and the department wanted $30 million for itself, up to $12 million of which it wanted immediately, Nolan said.

In April, the department fined Heald some $30 million for allegedly misrepresenting its job placement rates.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, California’s top prosecutor, wouldn’t readily allow future buyers to dodge existing claims her office has against Corinthian. Heald buyers likely wanted the company’s assets but none of its legal liabilities.

The last remaining potential buyer for Heald formally withdrew from the sale process on April 22, Nolan said. Corinthian tried to strike agreements with other parties to allow current students to complete their studies, but the Education Department effectively blocked those efforts, too.

The department also wanted Corinthian to post by May 17 what Nolan described as a “significant” letter of credit in order to maintain access to federal financial aid for its students.

“Corinthian’s bankruptcy filing follows aggressive enforcement actions taken by the department to protect students,” Denise Horn, an Education Department spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement. “The department remains committed to protecting students and ensuring that those who have been hurt by fraud -- including at Corinthian -- receive the debt relief they are entitled to.”

Nolan said the company began to wind down its operations on April 23. It announced on April 26 that it would close its remaining campuses, effective April 27. Some 2,700 Corinthian employees lost their jobs.

This story was updated Monday afternoon with information from Corinthian's bankruptcy documents and with a statement from the Education Department.

SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg Died From Head Injury At Gym

By Gabriel Stargardter and Sarah McBride

MEXICO CITY/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - SurveyMonkey Chief Executive Dave Goldberg died Friday from a head injury while exercising at a resort in Mexico, the local prosecutor's office said Monday. Goldberg, the husband of Facebook Inc <FB.O> Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, fell off a treadmill at a private villa in Punta Mita and hit his head, the prosecutor's spokesman said.

Goldberg's brother found him on the floor of the villa gym showing signs of life, the spokesman said. Goldberg was taken to the hospital, where he later died.

The spokesman said that Sandberg was on vacation with Goldberg and went to the hospital. Facebook declined to comment on behalf of Sandberg.

No criminal investigation is planned as there were no signs of violence, the spokesman said.

He said the accident happened at the Palmasola at the Four Seasons Resort, a private 9-bedroom beach front villa, which gives guests access to the facilities of the Four Seasons. Punta Mita is located near the Mexican west coast vacation town of Puerto Vallarta.

Goldberg's brother announced his death on Saturday morning via a Facebook post, and SurveyMonkey also put out a short statement.

One of Silicon Valley's most admired entrepreneurs, Goldberg was known for his low-key demeanor and the grace and good humor with which he handled being married to one of the nation's most recognizable executives.

Under his leadership, privately held poll-taking company SurveyMonkey grew into a $2 billion business.

A memorial service for Goldberg will be held on Tuesday at Stanford University, according to friends of the family.

(Additional reporting by Simon Gardner and Michelle Conlin; Editing by Peter Henderson, Richard Chang, Bernard Orr)

Tesla's New Home Battery Could Be The iPad Of Energy Storage

Tesla Motors just released the iPad of energy storage.

The electric automaker on Thursday unveiled a line of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries -- the sort used in the electric automaker’s Model S sedans -- meant to store solar energy and power homes and businesses. The sleek, wall-mounted devices collect excess energy from solar panels throughout the day for use at night.

The batteries, due out this summer, come in two variations. The commercial-scale Powerpack, currently getting a test run at 10 retail stores across the U.S., can be used by businesses. The consumer model, the Powerwall, will sell for up to $3,500 and could rev the nascent energy-storage industry’s engine.

“It’s the iPad of stationary storage,” Jay Whitacre, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the chief technology officer at the sodium-ion battery company Aquion Energy, told The Huffington Post. “Tablets were out there and no one really wanted them. Then came the iPad.”

As with Apple’s iconic tablet, Tesla -- armed with CEO Elon Musk’s starpower -- could make solar-storage batteries fashionable. Though the company already has a considerable field of rivals, including tech goliath Samsung and Swiss battery startup Alevo, which raised $1 billion in private funding last year, none have generated the same amount of attention as Musk. On stage at a Tesla facility outside Los Angeles on Thursday, the product launch was akin to a new iPhone announcement.

But the real challenge will be to make owning the home device economical.

The first problem is the cost. At $3,500 each, the batteries are expensive. And since each one is limited to storing 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity, many homeowners would need to buy several in order to power their homes fully. Tesla is building a $5 billion plant in Nevada, dubbed the Gigafactory, which will produce lithium-ion batteries en masse. But, until then, the price will remain high. To boot, homeowners would have to bear the cost of installing solar panels or wind turbines to charge the batteries in the first place.

The other issue is the current electricity rate structure in the United States. Here, electricity is more expensive during the day, when solar panels generate energy, and cheaper at night. Utility companies will buy consumers' excess solar generated during peak hours and recirculate it into the power grid, then sell it back at a cheaper night rate, when solar panels aren’t producing energy.

Therefore, there's little incentive for people to use solar-storage batteries that hang onto energy during the day if they could be selling it at peak prices to the utility companies and buying it back later on the cheap.

“It only makes sense for storage if it’s more expensive to buy electricity at night and sell it back during the day,” Brian Warshay, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told HuffPost. “But most people aren’t on those types of rates.”

Germany, on the other hand, does offer those rates. The country encourages the use of solar storage by charging high rates for electricity drawn from the power grid in the evenings.

Some states have pioneered models similar to Germany’s. Hawaii has the highest electricity rates in the country, at over 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Rates in New England are also high, topping more than 20 cents per kilowatt-hour.

But, across the U.S., the average price of electricity was about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour in February, the most recent month calculated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“For the most part,” Warshay said, “grid electricity is just really cheap.”

At the moment, then, Tesla's new batteries stand as something of a proof of concept. But if the company can decrease its manufacturing costs, and if states start pricing electricity more aggressively, Musk's vision of a solar-powered future could become a reality.

For New Lands' End CEO, Green Is The Best Color

Federica Marchionni felt like a natural fit at Lands’ End. Literally.

The 43-year-old chief executive, who took office in February, said was charmed by the apparel company’s outdoorsy brand. Paying homage to the late Lands’ End founder, Gary Comer, an environmentalist and sailor, Marchionni kicked off her reign by doubling down on the company’s efforts to be green.

“He was a sailor, and I love sailing,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview. “It’s the contact with nature that’s important.”

Lands’ End already has an eco-friendly reputation. Marchionni said it recycles 90 percent of the waste it generates at its plant in Wisconsin, where the company is based. Though the carbon footprint from shipping 16 million boxes around the world is notable, she pointed out that 60 percent of the packaging material is recycled. Over the last three years, Lands’ End has also helped plant more than 500,000 trees in U.S. forests.

But Marchionni wants to up the ante. As she mulls expanding around the world, she's also launched a new environmental campaign that would see the company planting more trees, using more sustainable materials in its products and further reducing its carbon footprint.

This spring, Lands' End plans to help plant half a million additional trees in partnership with the National Forest Foundation.

The company is also on track to receive a form certification from the Swiss company Bluesign, which ensures that textiles are made with eco-friendly dyes and materials that are safe for workers to handle. It's unclear how quickly these changes will be implemented.

“Everything that’s going into production is more sustainable,” Marchionni said. “[Bluesign] reduces the harmful chemicals and dyes. They improve safety for the workers at the plant and in local communities.”

Still, Marchionni said she can make the strongest sustainability push for Lands’ End by using the c-suite as a pulpit to reach customers.

In April, she began sending emails to customers to determine who would prefer to receive a digital version of the Lands' End annual catalog. Gradually switching to digital would allow the company to reduce the energy and materials needed to print and ship a physical booklet.

Now, like a couple embarking on honeymoon travel after renewing vows, Marchionni wants to take Lands’ End -- and its recommitment to sustainability -- global. A former executive at Dolce & Gabbana, she envisions a lifestyle brand for outdoorsy people around the planet. Lands’ End currently focuses on the U.S. and has small markets in the U.K., Germany and Japan, but Marchionni wants to be in every major market.

This may be a critical time for the company. Since Marchionni took over in February, the stock price has been on a downward slope.

The company's sales from November 2014 through the end of January 2015 hit $504.6 million, down 4.9 percent from the previous year. Still, its revenues have been rising steadily since it spun off from Sears Holdings Corp. last April.

“I do believe we needed to say what we really are great at,” she said of the new environmental campaign, which kicked off on Earth Day, April 22. “Now we’re going to take on the rest of the world.”

At the very least, Marchionni, who hails from a small village outside Rome, wants to help create a better world for her 7-year-old son, Gabriel.

"He loves the environment, we care about it together," she said. "And I love him. He's my life."