In The News

In a little more than a month, over 14,000 people from more than 200 countries will gather in Tokyo, Japan, for the Summer Olympics. They will be joined by thousands of delegates and members of the press. One month later, an additional 5,000 athletes and support staff will come together in Tokyo for the Paralympic Games.  These two enormous events have APB speaker Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and several of his colleagues deeply concerned. 

When APB speaker Maryam Banikarim decided to return to the workforce after a year-and-a-half hiatus, she never imagined her new job would play a major role in helping millions navigate one of the worse crises of the century. And this same event would skyrocket her company’s social platform growth. Banikarim, former CMO of Hyatt Hotels, joined social media company Nextdoor as CMO just a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic began ravaging the world and forcing us to stay home. 

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering global humanitarian crises and suffering around the world, New York Times columnist and author Nicholas Kristof thought he had seen it all. But what has surprised him the most are the problems and hopelessness happening right here in the United States. An epidemic of despair, he calls it.  

APB speaker and former commanding officer of SEAL Team TWO Mike Hayes has made J.P. Morgan’s 2021 Summer Reading List with his book, Never Enough: A Navy SEAL Commander on Living a Life of Excellence, Agility, and Meaning. The book discusses the mentality of the U.S. Navy SEALs and how it can be implemented in everyone’s life for the better. J.P. Morgan stated, “He shares the pillars of excellence, agility and meaning, along with the notion that everyone must look for opportunities to support their teams in order to ensure we all succeed.”   

Do you want to drastically improve your thinking? APB speaker and former commanding Officer of SEAL Team TWO Mike Hayes offers us 5 ideas to illustrate “how to think,” instead of “what to think,” to Inc. Drawing on examples from his illustrious career, Hayes shares leadership principles such as teaching individuals how a leader’s job is not to make the best decision, but rather to make sure the best decision gets made. In addition, he explains how comfort with discomfort is a key tenet of high-performance individuals and organizations. According to Hayes, these five ideas can improve our thinking in almost any scenario: 1. All high-stakes decisions are fundamentally the same, 2. Get the broadest range of inputs possible, 3. Emphasize the signal over the noise, 4. The first decision is when to make the decision, and 5. Bring your values to bear in every decision you make.

IndieWire reports that speaker and boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has a two-part documentary now on Hulu. Titled Mike Tyson: The Knockout, this documentary shows the highs and lows of Tyson’s legendary boxing career as it moves through his life story, from struggling through a tough childhood to becoming a world champion.   

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Do you want to know how to strike a balance between addressing larger societal issues and meeting your own mental health needs? APB speaker and mental health advocate Dr. Nii Addy gives you the answer in his podcast, Addy Hour, alongside APB speaker and co-founder of March For Our Lives David Hogg. 

There is a new data map that will help track systemic health disparities across the country, and APB speaker and health policy expert Daniel E. Dawes J.D. helped create it. "A game-changer, while still in its initial phases, the Health Equity Tracker will provide us the opportunity to track the health inequities plaguing this country,” said Dawes, to Fierce Healthcare.  

On May 26, 2020, Philonise Floyd learned that his older brother, George “Perry” Floyd, Jr. had been murdered by four police officers in Minneapolis after a store clerk alleged that he passed a counterfeit $20 bill. The world watched as named officer, Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. George’s death sparked a worldwide outpour of protests against police brutality, especially toward black people. Philonise vowed that George’s death would not be in vain, another hashtag on a t-shirt, and started the Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, actively working to eliminate the daily impacts of police brutality, criminal justice reform and systemic racism.