Pete Buttigieg brought star power to the Transportation Department. Insiders explain how he's winning over his new staff, the White House, and Republicans.
Hello everyone!
Welcome to this weekly roundup of stories from Insider's Business co-Editor in Chief Matt Turner. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.
What we're going over today:
- Our profile of Secretary Pete's quest to make the Transportation Department cool again.
- 67 powerful Black women CEOs and executives on their time in corporate America.
- The rise and fall of Nikola founder Trevor Milton, who convinced the world he was the next Elon Musk.
- An inside look at Google's top secret project to give you superhuman hearing. Codename: Wolverine.
Hello!
This week was busy as ever, and we've got a ton of Insider deep dives to share with you today. But before we get to that, a look at what's trending this morning:
- Biden vowed to start sending out stimulus checks "this month." Here's the latest.
- Meanwhile, one of Ted Cruz's claims about the $1,400 checks has been shot down as "just plain false."
- Spam robocalls are on the rise. Here's how you can actually stop them.
- Trump is seeking revenge on GOP figures who disparaged him in the final months of his presidency.
Now, let's get to it.
What Pete Buttigieg did next
From Adam Wren and Robin Bravender:
Rank-and-file Transportation Department employees saw their phones start blowing up the day President-elect Joe Biden announced that Pete Buttigieg was his pick to lead their agency.
One DOT staffer remembered being bombarded that December Tuesday with text messages, emails, and Facebook posts from friends who knew little about his actual job but were excited to hear that Buttigieg would be his boss.
It's not uncommon for political stars and former White House contenders to land in a presidential Cabinet, but they usually don't call their new home the Transportation Department, a behemoth federal agency created during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and whose portfolio includes pipeline safety, air-traffic control, and highway maintenance.
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, a champion for transparency, failed to disclose dozens of stock transactions worth at least $671,000 in apparent violation of federal law
- Biden and the Democrats have a rare opening to try passing long-sought gun reform laws. Here's a look at the bills they're proposing.
Black women CEOs and executives on their time in corporate America
From Jennifer Eum, Keishel Williams, Sawyer Click, and Taylor Tyson:
Across corporate America, the struggle to place women - especially Black women - at the helm of major companies continues. Paving the way forward are women like Thasunda Brown Duckett, who was just named CEO of retirement and investment manager TIAA. She will become only the fourth Black woman chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.
Duckett is one of 67 women featured in this collection of responses from influential Black businesswomen in America.
Insider asked these executives, from leading companies like Google, Salesforce, and Amazon, to reflect on their rise to the top, the struggle of being a Black woman in white corporate America, and the best career advice they've received. Their answers are raw and poignant, emotional and inspiring.
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- Tulsa is paying people $10,000 to live there. 4 professionals who recently made the move from big cities like NY and Chicago say it's the best decision they ever made.
- Entrepreneurship is the key to building Black wealth in America. 4 cities are leading the way in supporting business owners.
Google's superhuman hearing project
From Hugh Langley:
Alphabet's moon-shots division, X, is quietly working on a top-secret augmented-reality device that would give people enhanced hearing abilities, Insider has learned.
The project, which is internally named "Wolverine," is a nod to the comic-book mutant's heightened sense of hearing, said four former employees familiar with the details, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The team started seriously working on the project in 2018, the sources said, and in that time it has gone through multiple prototypes and has gained the favor of executives like Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman isn't concerned with diversity initiatives or political correctness. But while the conservative billionaire mocks liberal Silicon Valley culture, a backlash could be brewing.
- Google's move away from targeted advertising threatens to upend marketers' scramble to save digital ads
Inside the downfall of Nikola founder Trevor Milton
From Mark Matousek:
Trevor Milton's star rose as Nikola raised a billion dollars in funding and assembled a blue-chip roster of partners and customers. By 2020, Milton, the serial entrepreneur who'd started four companies before Nikola and sold two of them, was being compared to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
But last June, Bloomberg was the first to report that the One prototype Milton unveiled in 2016 couldn't drive under its own power. Three months later, Hindenburg Research, a financial-research firm that calls out companies it thinks have misbehaved, said Milton had a long history of bending the truth.
Milton denied the allegations, but they hung over him until, a little over a week later, he resigned from the company that made him a billionaire, before it delivered a single truck.
Read the full story here:
Also read:
- The true disrupter in the auto industry isn't Tesla - it's Fisker.
- President Biden hopes to build 500,000 new electric car chargers by 2030. We talked to five experts about how to make that happen.
Lastly, don't forget to check out Morning Brew - the A.M. newsletter that makes reading the news actually enjoyable.
Here are some headlines you might have missed last week.
- Matt