• Supermodel turned businesswoman Ashley Graham spoke at Business Insider's The Long Play on Thursday.
• Graham has invested in startups and launched her own ventures, including Lucci sparkling wine.
• She said that raising money for the alcohol brand was "very, very hard and humbling."

Ten years after making history as the first plus-size model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Ashley Graham has built a business portfolio spanning skincare and clothing to baby care and alcohol.

The 38-year-old supermodel turned businesswoman spoke at Business Insider's The Long Play event in New York City on Thursday to discuss her breaking barriers in fashion and navigating the difficult world of investment and entrepreneurship.

"I realized quickly that my body is my business," she told Business Insider's Leena Rao. "So how can I scale this?"

That crossover appeal has helped her build a massive social media audience — nearly 30 million followers across platforms — with whom she connects and brings along as she expands her ventures.

Among her latest projects is Lucci, a sparkling Italian Lambrusco wine brand she co-founded in February. Graham said Lucci was started from the ground up and was the first time she had to ask investors to come in.

"Asking people for money is very, very hard, and humbling," she said, adding later that it's been a "great learning curve" as it was the first time she had to answer to investors for the 'why' behind decisions.

From swimsuit model to leading a brand empire

In 2016, Graham appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit issue, becoming the first plus-size model to do so.

The following year, she was named one of TIME's most influential people of the year, had a Barbie doll modeled after her, and released her first book, "A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like."

Forbes listed her as one of the highest-paid models in 2017, with an estimated income of $5.5 million; she was the first plus-size model to break the top 10. Her namesake JCPenney collection, which launched in October 2025, is made exclusively for customers who wear size 14 and up.

Building beyond the runway

After the SI cover launched her to international fame, Graham said she monetized on the viral moment by releasing swimsuit and lingerie lines. Today, she still regularly releases collaborations with intimate brands like Knix, for which she serves as Global Ambassador and investor.

"When your body is your brand, you're always talking about it," she said.

She's also become an investor: Graham has backed the period-care brand Rif Care, the infant-formula company Bobbie, and the sustainable skincare brand Fig.1 Beauty. In 2022, she joined Fig.1 as both an investor and a partner, saying she wanted involvement beyond a typical celebrity endorsement.

As the years have passed, Graham said she's learned from past mistakes, learned how to say no, and has leaned into being very intentional about building teams around her that she can trust.

Graham also said she was surprised by "just how ruthless [VC] can be," as well as by how much success there can be.

Her most recent exit as an investor was with Wonderbelly, a clean antacid startup, which was acquired by Procter & Gamble in January.

Balancing a business with raising 3 children

Graham has managed to balance that growing career with motherhood. She and her husband Justin Ervin, whom she wed in 2010, welcomed their first child in 2020, followed by twin boys in 2022.

In 2024, she walked the Victoria's Secret runway for the first time. In making the decision to join the fashion show, she said she asked the company about its plans to expand its size range.

"I don't want to just come on as a token," she said. "I don't want to be the one-trick pony."

During the years she was having her children, she said, her investments also took on a family focus, leaning into brands she "felt like they were in [her] zeitgeist at the moment," including babycare and women-led brands. Now, her businesses are growing with her kids.

At Business Insider's event, she teased about her next business venture launching next summer: A home company partly inspired by her children.

• Take-Two's CEO says his 13,000 employees share a collective goal: make the world's best entertainment.
• His philosophy to get there? A formulaic pay program aligned with that mission, empathetic listening, and direct CEO access.
• Take-Two Interactive is getting set to launch its hotly-anticipated GTA 6 in November.

Strauss Zelnick is relentlessly focused on making "the best entertainment on earth." There's no confusion about that mission among his employees, he said.

"I have 13,000 colleagues," the Take-Two Interactive CEO said at Business Insider's The Long Play event in New York City on Thursday. "100% of them can and will tell you exactly what I just said."

His management philosophy — "establish a mission, establish a strategy, and promulgate collective culture" — is about to get its biggest test in years.

Take-Two is the publisher behind popular games like "Red Dead Redemption" and "NBA 2K," and, on November 19, they'll launch a new "Grand Theft Auto." The wildly popular series hasn't had a new mainline installment since 2013 and has delayed its launch twice in an effort to meet the studio's exacting standards. GTA 6 is central to Take-Two's forecast for at least $8 billion in net bookings for fiscal 2027.

Zelnick has run the company since 2007. To align employee incentives with Take-Two's big expectations, he believes compensation should be based on a formula aligned with the company's mission — not left to manager discretion.

"I personally believe that discretionary compensation programs are toxic," he said, adding that they create "politics and get you the wrong results, especially over time."

"So, we're all formulaic," he said. "You perform, the company performs — you get paid. You perform, the company doesn't perform — you don't get paid. Company performs, you don't perform — if you still have your job, you get paid."

Zelnick also said he has no chief of staff, is available on Slack 24/7, and shares his cellphone number with employees.

"If you're not president of the United States, you have no reason to have a chief of staff," he said.

That doesn't mean he will swoop in and override an employee's manager, said Zelnick, who considers himself an empathetic listener. He said workers should feel heard — and that he will try to help them solve a problem.

Still, he doesn't believe his formula at Take-Two is necessarily the right approach for every leader.

"Leadership comes in all flavors," he said. "You have to be your own kind of leader, and I don't think anyone should adopt my skills, because you're not me."

• While some companies are slashing head count, Google's is surging.
• The company had nearly 205,000 employees at the end of September.
• While Google has conducted layoffs, it has also ramped up hiring and acquired Wiz.

While AI may be driving some companies to slash their head count, Google's is soaring.

When Google reported its Q3 earnings on Wednesday, it said it had 204,757 employees for the quarter ending September 2026. That means Google added roughly 10,000 people to the payroll since the end of March.

The uptick in head count runs counter to another trend across the tech industry, where some of Google's peers are slashing their workforces. Meta has been on a cost-cutting odyssey for several years, while Microsoft recently offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees.

Some of Google's head count growth can be attributed to mergers and acquisitions. On March 11, Google said it had completed its acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz, which had roughly 2,000 employees.

In January 2023, Google announced it would slash roughly 12,000 roles — around 6% of the workforce at the time — and has since made several smaller rounds of layoffs, Business Insider has reported.

While the head count has grown somewhat steadily since Q2 2024, it has accelerated since the end of 2025. Google also reported Wednesday that its quarterly revenue grew 25% from this period last year.

Have something to share? Contact this reporter via email at hlangley@businessinsider.com or Signal at hughlangley.01. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Tired of milling about polished networking events, balancing a cocktail and lukewarm appetizers while attempting to shake hands and answer the question, "So, what do you do?", workers are turning away from the happy hour and toward events that take them back to their preschool roots.

Groups from Boston to Boise are hosting events to meet twin needs: IRL connection and AI practice. It's a grown-up version of "parallel play" that organizers hope will lead to more meaningful interactions than sipping discounted margaritas, and prove more fun than clumsily vibe-coding at home alone. The meetups include AI agent building workshops, hackathons, walk-and-talks, and fitness classes curated for specific industry founders.

The trend is a twist on networking for our times. People want to meet in person, but are still retraining their social skills after Covid. The events draw from hackathons and take on a new urgency: Companies hungry for AI-skilled workers are brushing up against a job market brimming with candidates desperate to learn AI and stand out. Anxious they'll be left behind, people are showing up not just to make a new connection, but to make sense of a rapidly evolving AI landscape.

"You can spend all your time, every single day, looking at apps or looking at a blog, or looking at a podcast to see what they're doing," Andrea Huspeni, the founder of pet brands Bye Bye Dog Breath and This Dog's Life, tells me. She attended an event put on by a group called AI After 5 this month, as she's learning to use AI to keep her operating costs down. "But that is different than going to an event in person and hearing other people's experiences, other people's use cases, and other people's hacks."

On a Tuesday evening in downtown Manhattan, some 60 people gathered under dim lights in a modern, industrial space for a sold-out event. It wasn't a raucous happy hour or a fireside chat with tech industry leaders. They were there for a hands-on workshop to build AI agents.

The evening, bookended with food and drinks to start and time to chat after, felt more like a classroom than a typical networking event. That's by design. Some attendees had their eyes locked on a presentation about the basics of agent building; others peeled off into pairs, sitting close together in booths with their own laptops, speaking in hushed voices about the projects on their screens.

Mina Abdulla, who started AI After 5 this year to help women learn how to use AI, walked from table to table, checking in on dyads like a teacher making rounds in a classroom. She insists that this isn't just more work after the workday, which is already increasingly filled with AI. It's fun, she says, and the format takes people back to learning as a kid — experimenting and solving problems side by side. "Learning is a social thing," she says. "It's making AI feel more approachable."

As AI reshapes the way we work, non-technical employees especially worry they'll be left behind — and these workshops draw people from across industries and roles. "People don't feel like they can do it on their own, and they get stressed," says Paige Kehoe, who founded Audacious AF this year, a networking group for women building with and learning AI. That pressure pushes more people to attend training or try to train themselves on their own time.

Traditional forms of networking have failed to meet the moment. A Harris Poll conducted on behalf of staffing firm Express Employment Professionals late last year found that three-quarters of workers felt networking had become more transactional and less about personal connections. People socialize with coworkers less, and happy hour participation fell by 9% this year, as rising prices and remote work drain some of the appeal.

But people want to hang out. Attendance at microevents grew by 23% in 2024, according to Eventbrite data. Last year, nearly 60% of people said they wanted to attend events where they could socialize around an activity, and where making connections wasn't the main focus. The number of community AI hackathons put on via Devpost, a platform for in-person and online hackathons, jumped from 369 in 2024 to 706 last year. A search of Luma shows there are about a dozen similar AI building workshops and meetups in New York City over the next week, and typically two or three such events a day in San Francisco.

Unpolished, come-as-you-are events tap into a trend that's been brewing for years: a push for authenticity. Instead of panels with canned answers and humble bragging at happy hours, people can come to these workshops and admit they need help.

"Everyone's just so tired of all of the really perfect put-together content that companies were pushing out," Kehoe says. She held her first workshop for women who wanted to learn to work with Claude this spring. They had room for about 50 people, but nearly 1,000 joined the waitlist, she says.

No-Code NYC has hosted events since 2018, building a community for people who weren't technical by trade but wanted to learn to use drag-and-drop coding tools or might be toying with the idea of working as developers. Its founder, Erik Israni, tells me that interest has expanded because of AI. Developers coming to his events want to brush up on AI skills, as do people who would never have considered themselves technical. The developers can better explain concepts to the newbies, but those outside the traditional tech world pick up on the concepts and act on them quickly, Israni says, and there are benefits for people on either side of that divide in coming together. "There's an uncertainty in the future for what anyone's job is going to look like, for what skills they're going to need," Israni says. As AI has shaken job prospects, it's also making coding more accessible for those willing to dive in. "Not only is there a sense that I can do this, but there's also a sense of FOMO."

Some companies have brought similar formats in-house to train staff. Tariq Shaukat, CEO of Sonar, a software company focused on verifying AI code, tells me the company recently hosted an in-person hackathon for the technical team, bringing remote workers together with office staff. In that one week, he estimates the team made more progress in developing new skills than they had in the previous four months.

"Getting them together in this unstructured environment with everyone with a little bit of playtime helped give people the space and freedom to kind of learn and experiment," he says. "There's a lot of tribal knowledge development and sharing that's happening."

People working on their own projects want to socialize, but they need loose industry connections perhaps less than they need tangible AI skills. They also feel a time crunch to learn the latest technologies. "People are also scaling faster, iterating faster," says Anna Kaplan, founder of Narrativ by AK, a storytelling and branding firm for founders. "That's why people are more picky about the events they go to."

This new version of networking resonates with people who still feel socially stifled after years of remote work and school, and who feel too many of their social interactions are mediated by algorithms. These events are an antidote to the loneliness workers feel, as well as frustration over a broken job-hunting process. People want to optimize their lives and learn AI skills through experimentation and peer sharing. They're picky about the homework they're taking on. And if they make a friend or connection in addition to a new AI agent, that's a nice bonus.

• Today's tip to get better at work: Position yourself for a promotion by regularly making time to learn.
• PWC US CEO Paul Griggs started as an intern at the firm and said curiosity helped him rise to the C-suite.
• He suggests making a habit of researching questions you don't know the answer to.

Get better at: Climbing the ladder

Today's move

Paul Griggs started as an intern at PWC and now runs its US business. He said the same timeless advice that he followed early in his career applies to today's workers.

Griggs said employees who want to climb the ranks at work should get curious, even when they're not specifically asked to do something.

Why it works

Griggs said that the Benjamin Franklin quote, "Energy and persistence conquer all things," sums up what it takes to climb the corporate ladder. That means putting in the work when no one is looking.

He gave an example of two employees.

One of them leaves work on Friday and mentally clocks out to enjoy their weekend. The other one spends 20 minutes researching a problem they didn't know the answer to before carrying on with their plans.

That little bit of effort adds up, and, over time, this employee consistently shows up more prepared to conversations. They appear quicker at picking up concepts, they add more value, and, over time, they get more opportunities.

Try it today

Griggs said early in his career he worked with a colleague who brought a notebook to every meeting and jotted down anything he didn't understand.

You can try the same tactic. Start writing down the concepts and questions you want to learn more about, and get into the habit of spending a little extra time digging into them.

The bottom line

People notice when you put in the extra time to get better at your job. Getting in the habit of being naturally curious will help you stand out — especially in an era when information is so accessible.

Source

This insight is drawn from Business Insider's interview with PwC's US CEO Paul Griggs about how he went from intern to CEO. Read the full story by Ana Altchek here.

Has this habit helped you climb the ladder? Tell us what you think of this advice in the comments below.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with O'Shea Jackson, known professionally as Ice Cube, a 57-year-old rapper, actor, and cofounder of the professional three-on-three basketball league Big3, who is based in Los Angeles. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I started out wanting to be the best rapper in the world. Then John Singleton put me in "Boyz n the Hood" in 1991, and I loved creating at that level. I didn't just want to be an actor; I wanted to be a producer and a writer. I wanted to control my own films and be involved in record company meetings. That thrust me into the business world.

I understand, from the neighborhood I come from in South Central Los Angeles, that if you don't learn the game, you're going to get taken advantage of. I knew that if I really wanted to be a solo artist and didn't want to be a horror story at the end of my career, I needed to learn the business. That's when I started transitioning to working behind the scenes.

In 2016, my cofounder, Jeff Kwatinetz, and I had the idea to start a professional three-on-three basketball league. We spent a year throwing around ideas for it before announcing Big3 in January 2017.

I love three-on-three, and I've always wondered why it hasn't been professionalized. We wanted to elevate it and attract players who still want to play at a high level against their peers in the summer. I also still rap and act, and I haven't looked back.

Here's a day in my life in Los Angeles.

5 a.m. — my goldendoodle wakes me up

My goldendoodle, Luffy, and I wake up at the same time, or one of us wakes the other up. He's a year old, so he's still got puppy energy. My wife, Kimberly, and my four kids watch an anime where the lead character's name is Luffy, which is how he got the name.

I've been an early riser ever since I was young. I like to wake up before everybody — sometimes two hours before my family — to hyper-focus on anything that needs my undivided attention. The East Coast is three hours ahead of us anyway, so I don't want to be late talking to people there.

7 .a.m. — coffee and walking Luffy

I usually make myself coffee at home. I'm a fan of Peet's dark roast. Then I take Luffy for a walk.

I'm not big on working out early in the morning, so I try to exercise in the evenings. To me, the morning is for coffee, enjoying being alive, and being happy that I get another chance to see another day.

I'm not a big breakfast guy, so I usually don't eat until late afternoon.

8 a.m. — thinking in the shower

Most of my ideas come when I'm in the shower. They'll just flood me with everything I need to get done, almost in order: you gotta have that, you gotta have that, stop procrastinating on this, get to that. The shower is where I get a lot of my clarity.

9 .a.m. — prioritizing my schedule from my home studio and office

I don't go into the office — I stopped doing that in 1999. I'm not built to be in the office. I'm a remote kind of guy.

I've got a spot in my house that's a studio and office. A lot of work gets done in there, including new music. It's cool to have it all in one place.

Because I'm splitting my time between Big3, music, films, and other things, I have to really plan the day and prioritize. There are things that have to get done today and things that can wait until tomorrow, so it's about deciphering what needs my immediate attention and focus.

10 a.m. — meetings focused on wherever I am

When I'm traveling, my day can vary a lot. I have a lot of meetings on my iPhone and Zoom, so I plan them around whatever I'm there to do.

If I'm on tour, everything has to come after what I have to do that night and the focus I need to give to the live performance. I've tried to do a movie in the daytime and go to the studio at night, and something suffers.

You don't want to spread the work too thin, either, just because you can. You want everything to still be as top-notch and good as you can make it. That takes discipline.

12 p.m. — ordering lunch and trying not to succumb to burgers

When it's time to eat, the first thing that pops into my head is always burgers. I try to push burgers aside and think of something different, like a Greek salad wrap. Otherwise, I'd go for burgers and fries all the time.

1 p.m. — checking out social media and executing on projects

I look at a lot of social media to figure out my next move. Social media-wise, I still like X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. I'm not a big-time Facebook guy. I also don't use any AI apps.

I have several projects, and they're each in one of three stages: planning, execution, and follow-through. There's always work to be done. I've been in business for 40 years — I've seen it all. Nothing gets me too high, and nothing gets me too low.

I'm always looking for the most strategic way out of a sticky, complicated, or bad day. I don't really let it stress me, because I always know there's a solution.

6:30 p.m. — shut down business and hang with my family

It's crazy for somebody in the music industry, where mostly everything happens late at night, but it's for my sanity.

When it comes to my off time, people think I'd be out enjoying being Ice Cube, running around and getting the love that's out there, but I like kicking it with my family, hanging out, and not doing too much. A typical dinner is going to a steakhouse with my family, or to a burger joint if I'm on the road.

To unwind, I like to watch sports. Hopefully, there's a game on that I want to see: basketball, football, a Big3 game, or baseball. I'm a Dodgers guy.

11 p.m. — try to get to bed

I don't like to talk about stuff late at night, because then I'll be up all night, and I have to be back up in a few hours. I don't need much sleep, about five or six hours, but I make sure I get it.

Some days, I'm off to do something super cool, like a concert or a movie in France. It's important to balance the craziness with the regular, sensible stuff.

My life can be very exciting and complicated at times, and very simple and normal at other times. It's the best of both worlds.

• Logan Ivey wanted to make videos for Airbnb. So, he put his résumé on a balloon.
• His video about it got over 16 million views, and Airbnb offered him a contractor gig.
• "There is just no competing with that with a 1 page resume," he told Business Insider in an email.

Job applicants have dozens of tricks to make their résumés stand out. They print their CVs on colored paper or use eye-catching fonts. They include prompt injections for AI.

Logan Ivey put his résumé on a balloon.

Ivey has been making videos full-time since 2022, he told Business Insider in an email, and helped scale Matter Neuroscience's Instagram page to over 300,000 followers.

When looking for a new gig, Ivey made a list of what he considered the best companies with the worst Instagram accounts. "I thought airbnb was the coolest!" he wrote. "Being paid to travel and stay in cool places seems like a dream job."

So, he put "hire me" in big letters on a star-shaped balloon, along with a comparison of his and Airbnb's Instagram engagement rates, likes per post, and views per reel, based on his calculations.

Ivey then put the deflated balloon in a lockbox, similar to the ones Airbnb hosts use to store their property keys. He then mailed it to Airbnb, who would have to fill the balloon with air (get it?).

He posted a video about the process on Instagram on October 3. It's since racked up 16 million views, and Airbnb quickly responded: "Logaaaannnn my guy, my friend, check your DMs before this package triggers a security incident."

The company's account said it had the "perfect role" for Ivey.

Sure enough, Ivey posted an update three weeks later. Airbnb had DMed him, he said, and the two sides agreed that Ivey would make some videos. He listed some spots he'd like to film: a treehouse, a former elementary school, and a bath made of rock.

Ivey told Business Insider that he'll be a contractor and that "nothing beyond the follow up video I made has been set in stone yet."

Let's face it: the job market can feel impossible these days, and applicants are aiming for as much visibility as possible. Becoming a "LinkedIn lunatic" might help. Another applicant received her job offer after posting a presentation that pitched herself.

Ivey's takeaway: make yourself stand out. Before making his balloon-résumé video, he'd applied to about 15 jobs without receiving a single interview.

"Making your skillset widely known is definitely beneficial," he told BI. "One company told me they have 10,000 applicants per job posting. There is just no competing with that with a 1 page resume."

Chancellor’s comments come as fiscal watchdog says disability benefits will cost £100bn a year before end of decade

• Business live – latest updates

John Healey had said there will be a reduction in the welfare bill before the next election, with a “tough” approach to young people who do not accept support to get a job or training.

The chancellor was repeatedly pressed on the issue in broadcast interviews after documents from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggested sickness and disability benefits would cost £100bn a year before the end of the decade.

• Kylie Genter graduated from college with no career plan.
• At 22, she moved to South Korea to teach English and became fascinated by female freedivers who harvest seafood.
• Now, 37 and married, she spends around five days a week diving with women in their 70s and 80s.

This-as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kylie Genter, 36, a Haenyeo diver on Jeju Island, South Korea. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I'd been teaching English in South Korea for four years when I learned about the Haenyeo — female freedivers who harvest seafood without using modern equipment. I was interested. So, in the summer of 2018, I completed diving lessons with the hopes that maybe I could work with them one day.

A few years later, my Korean husband, a scuba diver, read on a diving group chat that a small village on the southwestern side of Jeju Island was recruiting new divers. Their youngest diver was 68 — I wanted to give it a try.

At first, I was rejected, but I got invited back a month later. I don't know what changed in that one month, but I guess they suddenly became open to it, and I went in for an interview.

In January 2024, I started as a diving intern, and after two years of training, I received my Haenyeo license in April.

Finding my footing in South Korea

I was born in upstate New York, the middle of three kids. I went to SUNY Oswego and graduated with a degree in communications.

After graduating in 2012, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I applied to a few graduate schools and jobs, but nothing worked out. I was stressed out and wanted to leave. I thought about going to Japan to teach English, as I'd studied Japanese for a year while in university.

Instead, I settled for South Korea, where some schools offered housing. I didn't know much about Korea at that time — I wasn't really a big K-pop fan before I came.

So, just four months after graduating, I moved to Jinju, a three-and-a-half-hour high-speed train ride from Seoul, to work as an English teacher. In the mornings, I'd do 20-minute lessons with kids. In the afternoon, I'd have speaking classes.

I continued teaching until August 2020. That same year, I got married and started a pension business with my husband, while still teaching English on the side.

Building my life as a diver

To get my license, I had to dive 50 days within a year, sell 1.2 million South Korean won, or $884, worth of catch, and get a unanimous vote from the divers in the collective. It took me two years.

Language was an issue; despite having spent years in the country, I still couldn't always understand what was happening. My biggest strength is that I'm physically fitter than some of the divers — they are mostly in their 70s and 80s. So, I help out, like when they need someone to carry their nets full of catches or wash the dishes.

A lot of the work is physically demanding. If you don't feel good, you can't just push through. I can't dive if I have a cold or my sinuses are blocked because I can't equalize underwater. It's important to keep my body physically strong and healthy through working out.

Committing to an unconventional job

I enjoy my life. Every day is different, and I do a lot of things besides diving. I run a pet hotel with my husband; sometimes I still tutor and give lectures. I work more hours, but I also have a lot more flexibility to pursue other things. I don't need permission for a break or a day off.

On normal days, I wake up and take the dogs for a walk. Then, I go diving depending on the weather. If it's not great, I only dive for two or three hours. A normal day of diving may take four or five. After that, I take the dogs for another walk.

In our village, we typically dive five days a week. We'll take our catch and accumulate it after one cycle. After that, we'll sell it to the regional fishing co-operative. They'll pay our president, and she then distributes the money.

Being a diver isn't a full-time job. A lot of what we earn depends on the catch. I make around $2,000 a year. Teaching is much more financially stable. But I love learning from women who have been carrying on this work for generations.

When I'm diving, nothing else matters. I just have to focus on diving and catching seafood. Nobody can call me. I don't have to look at my phone and waste time doomscrolling.

When I'm deep underwater, it can be meditative, especially on days when the ocean is calm, and there's plenty to catch. I see myself wedded to this village for the rest of my life.