Fortune

Steve Klinsky has spent 25 years building New Mountain Capital into one of private equity’s most respected firms, with $60 billion in assets under management across hundreds of portfolio companies. But ask Klinsky what he’s most excited about right now, and he’ll tell you about a website. ModernStates.org—the online home of his Modern States Education Alliance—has quietly reached 800,000 people and given away the equivalent of 25,000 free years of college credit, all without spending a dollar on advertising. And Klinsky says that’s just the start. Read more: https://bit.ly/4trxJDM

When Natalie Marshall, better known as Natalie (Corporate Natalie), landed her first brand deal, she made $500 and felt invincible. “I was like, I am the richest woman in the world,” she told Fortune. Marshall, a Notre Dame alum and former Deloitte consultant, started Corporate Natalie as a side project. Over the past six years, she’s developed a character built around the absurdities of office life, from passive-aggressive Slack messages to buzzword-heavy all-hands meetings. The skits resonated. She now has 1.4 million followers on Instagram, 827,000 on TikTok, and 276,000 on LinkedIn—numbers that have attracted brand partners ranging from major tech firms to consumer goods companies. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eAJ29W_x

A year after firing thousands of probationary employees, the Trump administration indicated it needs more early-career workers to sustain the federal workforce. “We’ve got close to half of our population that’s within 10 years of retirement age,” Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told Fortune. On Monday, OPM launched the Early Career Talent Network, a recruitment push for entry-level workers to join the federal payroll that will offer young workers the chance to dip their toes into government work. Read more: https://bit.ly/4cg8ApF

"We see Amex as the premium credit card in the business." Nearly three decades after Delta Air Lines launched its partnership with American Express, their co-branded credit card accounted for $8 billion, or about 10%, of Delta’s revenue in 2025. On the latest episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast, Delta CEO Ed Bastian told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell that the card’s spending nears 1% of U.S. GDP annually—a figure that reflects the sheer volume of transactions flowing through the partnership across millions of cardholders. 🔗 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eSKA22-h

If you have dreams of joining the billionaires’ club one day, the best place to start might not be business school—it might be your local book club. Reading is the most commonly cited habit tied to the success of some of the world’s wealthiest families, according to a JPMorgan report that surveyed more than 100 billionaires whose collective net worth exceeds $500 billion. The wealth management firm found that exercise, consistency, and waking up early are also top contributors to long-term success. But across interviews, one theme dominated: extreme intentionality about how time is spent. “The currency of life is time,” wrote one anonymous billionaire family leader in the report. “It is not money. You think carefully about how you spend one dollar. You should think just as carefully [about] how you spend one hour.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/eQpXKdtB

When Natalie Marshall, better known as Corporate Natalie, landed her first brand deal (a sponsored post for Twisted Tea), she made $500 and felt invincible. “I was like, I am the richest woman in the world,” she told Fortune. The then-nascent content creator took her friends out to the nicest sushi restaurant she could find in San Francisco (but was really a “hole in the wall place,” she said) and bought everyone dinner. Marshall, a Notre Dame alum and former Deloitte consultant, started Corporate Natalie as a side project. Over the past six years, she’s developed a character built around the absurdities of office life, from passive-aggressive Slack messages to buzzword-heavy all-hands meetings. The skits resonated. She now has 1.4 million followers on Instagram, 827,000 on TikTok, and 276,000 on LinkedIn—numbers that have attracted brand partners ranging from major tech firms to consumer goods companies. https://lnkd.in/eHCYWxfk

Steve Wozniak was the innovator behind Apple, serving the company until 1985 and developing its first two computer models as well as the first Macintosh, which popularized the graphical user interface. Yet despite his contributions to the ubiquity of devices, he doesn't see the same value in the current AI trend. “I don’t use AI much at all,” he said. “I often read things [AI produces], and they just sound too dry and too perfect, and I want something from a human being, and I’m disappointed a lot.” Read more: https://bit.ly/4lSIIDw

Year-round warm weather, hitting the links, and kicking back with the grandkids has long been the quintessential American retirement dream. While that’s still out of reach for many Americans, most still hope and expect to retire comfortably after 40-plus years in the workforce. But what exactly does an ideal retirement look like for Americans? According to a Northwestern Mutual report released this week, Americans think they need $1.5 million to retire comfortably. That’s a $200,000 jump from last year, showing the figure is climbing faster than most workers can ever save. The study, based on a survey of 4,375 adults, found that inflation, longer life expectancies, and growing anxiety about the future of Social Security are all pushing the ideal retirement figure higher. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eTymNHyt

Everyone remembers the looseness that defined work during the COVID pandemic. While it brought its share of stress, particularly the constant concern about infection, remote work also rebalanced work-life integration. It became easy to fold laundry, run errands, or start dinner in between tasks, all while sipping iced coffee with a cat curled in your lap. But that lifestyle has fallen out of fashion for some business leaders, or at least for JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. In a recent interview on CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil, the billionaire said leaders who maintain remote work policies are falling behind, and could be failing their youngest workers. “You could build a company one way and I could build another company one way,” he said. “But I’ll tell you one thing: We would crush you.” JPMorgan reinstated a five-day in-person work policy in the beginning of 2025. Many other firms have instituted similar policies since the end of the COVID pandemic, including Amazon and Google. Today, 65% of U.S. job postings require workers to be fully on-site, according to employment firm Robert Half. Dimon has been particularly vocal about the value of the return-to-office move, saying in an interview last week at the Hill and Valley Forum that remote work breeds “rope-a-dope type of politics.” But Dimon’s assertion of the importance of in-person work clashes with the preferences of the majority of U.S. workers, including some of the most talented employees. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ekEkuqnz

Ken Griffin wants to reshape Miami—and maybe American politics. While many are “shorting” America’s prospects, Griffin is buying, and this certainly isn’t the first time one of his contrarian bets has paid off. He built Citadel not by hiring the typical cast of MBAs but engaging the likes of mathematicians, statisticians, and physicists who boasted great quant skills and learned finance fast. In 2022, fed up with Chicago’s failing schools, crime, and politicians, he moved Citadel’s base to Miami in what was arguably the most stunning corporate relocation in decades. “The fight in America is all about protecting the cultures in places like Miami or Silicon Valley, and keeping us a nation of entrepreneurs,” he says. If Griffin believes there’s a path to remaking American capitalism—based on what he sees working in Miami—he might be one of the few people on the planet with the money and influence to make it happen. 🔗 Read the full story in the latest issue of Fortune magazine: https://lnkd.in/eb-7rVmn