In The News

For Floridian and APB speaker Sybrina Fulton, life was good. In fact, she describes it as mostly happy and joyful. She worked for the Miami, Florida Housing Department while raising two sons with her ex. She was a member of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Miami Gardens. And then came Feb. 26, 2012. That’s the day her son, Trayvon Martin, was fatally shot and sparked a movement that changed the world—Black Lives Matter (BLM). “My son's name became a lightning rod for this country,” she writes in a recent opinion piece for USA Today, marking the eight-year anniversary of BLM. “But for me, he was my baby boy. I had planned to spend many more years watching him grow up, if his life hadn't been cut short.” 

In these tumultuous times, when tough conversations about race and social justice are needed more than ever, APB Exclusive Speaker Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s latest book, now being released in paperback, takes a deep dive into these topics. Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own is a mix of biography, history and social criticism about the state of our country and race relations today. The chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University argues that we stand on the precipice of a decision about who we are as a country that will reverberate for decades.

Ruzwana Bashir, Co-founder and CEO of Peek.com, was recently honored by the Female Founders Alliance (FFA) with its Founder Award for pivoting her travel and experiences company in the face of a global pandemic. The Founder Award is part of the FFA’s Champion Awards, which celebrate champions of intersectional gender equity. Finalists for the awards were selected from hundreds of nominations submitted by FFA’s community. Winners were chosen after tallying thousands of votes.  

Richard Buery, CEO of Achievement First and APB speaker, has been appointed the new chief executive officer of Robin Hood. The non-profit is New York’s largest poverty-fighting organization. Buery will join Robin Hood in September.  

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.