Las
Vegas, Remembrance
“In 11 minutes of rapid gunfire into a Las
Vegas concert crowd last Sunday night [October 1], a mass shooter killed 58
people attending a concert. As the NewsHour has done all week, tonight we
remember the final 10 of those victims.”
Health
Care, Underserved Communities
Listen
and read:
“The first teaching health centers began training
residents in 2011. They operate primarily out of clinics in rural communities
and other areas where primary care physicians are in short supply.
The ideal ratio of primary care physicians to patients is
about 1 for every 2,000, Stewart said. The ratio in east Bakersfield “is more
like 1 to 6,000, so we have a lot of catching up to do.”
Though teaching health centers remain relatively new,
experts say they’re already succeeding: Their residents generally stay in the
regions where they trained, putting down roots in communities with a big demand
for health care.
In June, the Rio Bravo program graduated its first class
of six doctors. Two joined the staff at a Clinica Sierra Vista clinic in east
Bakersfield. The other four are practicing in clinics serving low-income
communities in Sacramento, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.”
Business,
Startups, Women
“…Julia
Hartz, the co-founder and CEO
of Eventbrite, summed up the sentiment for everyone. “It’s
table stakes for building a great company,” she says. “If you want to build a
once in a lifetime company that really matters, and really changes the space,”
then social impact, philanthropy, and economic uplift need to be part of your
thinking. “Legacies are built on the practices of your company,” she says.
Renfrew agreed. “You can do well by doing good, and you should.”
While
all four founders had stories to share about the nuts and bolts of building
businesses. From working with investors, getting to profitability, and
surveying existing customers for new product ideas—the idea of an expanded
bottom line was essential. And, in many cases, unusual.
One
example: Equity. When is the right time to share equity with employees? The
Silicon Valley model, it was agreed, was old school. “Men hoard all the equity
and give it out in snippets,” said Renfrew. “If you’re going to ask people to
be committed to your mission, they should be included.””
Conservation, Environment
Interview:
“People regularly approach Jane Goodall
in airports, tears in their eyes, and tell her she’s their idol. She travels
300 days a year, and at 83, she speaks dreamily about her home in England, the
house she grew up in, where her sister still lives with her own family. Goodall
will be there soon for a rare five-day vacation, sleeping in the same room with
her childhood books—Dr. Dolittle and Tarzan were among her favorites—and looking out
the window at the trees she once climbed.
In the 1960s Goodall, perhaps the world’s most
famous primatologist, taught us that humans and chimpanzees weren’t as
different from each other as people then believed. Our closest relatives have
individual personalities, eat meat, and even make and use their own tools. A
1965 documentary about that work, Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, turned Goodall
into a global celebrity, and she has been in the public eye ever since. She has
used that attention to fund ongoing research in Gombe Stream National Park, in Tanzania, where she did her initial
conservation work. But she has also gone beyond her role as a scientist to
encourage children to become environmental and social advocates, to develop
antipoverty programs in the areas around African nature preserves, and to
promote environmental stewardship.
Goodall is on the road again now to
publicize a new documentary, entitled simply JANE, which highlights her early-career insights.
The film debuts Monday at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, with Goodall in
attendance.
Although immensely practical about the
hard work it takes to keep up her social justice mission, Goodall retains the
idealism that has propelled her for decades. “Every single individual makes a
difference every single day,” she says in her quiet but determined British
accent. “We get to choose what sort of difference we’re going to make.”
Goodall spoke to Scientific American about her past work, recent
discoveries and plans and hopes for the future.”
Family Leave Policy, Work Place
“… the most
revolutionary aspect of the plan is Amazon’s leave share program. Leave Share
is more commonly seen in unionized workplaces, where employees can share their
sick leave with one another, giving those who need it more time but ensuring
work continues smoothly while they’re out. At Amazon, which isn’t unionized,
instead of sharing paid leave with a co-worker, you can share it with your
spouse, even if they don’t work at Amazon. Yes, really. If an Amazon employee
is ready to return to work but has a spouse who hasn’t been able to take a
full, paid parental leave, Amazon will allow the Amazon employee to share up to
six weeks of their paid leave at the employee’s salary. That way, the spouse
can take unpaid leave from their own jobs without creating extreme financial
stress the Amazon employee would end up feeling too.
The reasoning behind
Amazon’s leave share is sound: Parents succeed in the workplace when they have
a supportive partner at home. When both parents spend time as the primary
caregivers for an infant, studies show,
they’ll continue to share caregiving responsibilities as the child ages. Since
most workplaces today offer only maternity leave if they offer paid leave at
all, it is difficult for fathers to take time away to take part in caregiving.
In essence, Amazon is pioneering a new way to help its female employees by
financially encouraging their partners to be more involved at home.
Studies show that
women take on a majority of child care and household responsibilities, even
when both parents work, which leads women to drop out of the workforce at a higher rate after having
children. By promoting a shared environment at home, Amazon is
likely to have higher long-term retention rates for women at the company.
Winter described the leave share program as a
“game changer.” “Amazon has employees everywhere,” he said. “Not everyone has a
spouse who has a luxury of taking paid leave. We decided it’s not just our
employee that needs this, it’s choice and flexibility for our families.””
