• Donald Glover told fans at a show on Saturday that he had a stroke last year.
• Glover said he experienced a bad headache, similar to the actor Jamie Foxx, who had a stroke in 2023.
• Research suggests more people under 50 are having strokes.

Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, said that he unknowingly had a stroke while performing in Louisiana in 2024 — highlighting a worrying trend of younger people experiencing the condition.

"The first thing I thought was, 'Here I am still copying Jamie Foxx," he told fans at a music festival in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Strokes are more likely to happen in people aged 65 and over, but Glover was 41, while Foxx was 55 when he had one in 2023.

For both, the stroke started with a bad headache.

Glover told the crowd that he experienced a "really bad pain" in his head and vision difficulties.

"I couldn't really see well," the actor and musician said.

Glover said that at a hospital in Houston, the next stop on his 2024 The New World tour, doctors told him he'd had a stroke.

Glover postponed the tour and later canceled the remaining dates, telling fans that he had to focus on his "physical health," in a since-deleted X post.

More young people are having strokes

A stroke happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or cut off, killing cells. It can cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, or even death.

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and a leading cause of long-term disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the risk of having a stroke increases with age, anyone can have one. The number of people under 50 who had a stroke for the first time increased by 36% between 1990 and 2021, according to a study published in May 2025 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

High blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels, as well as pollution, could explain the rise, the authors said.

F.A.S.T is an easy way to remember stroke symptoms

When someone having a stroke receives medical attention early, they are likely to experience less long-term damage. That's why it's crucial to know the warning signs.

• Face numbness or drooping.
• Arm weakness or the inability to raise both arms.
• Speech difficulty or slurring.
• Time to call 911 as soon as any of these symptoms appear.

Other stroke symptoms can include:

• Confusion, trouble speaking, or understanding speech.
• Trouble seeing in one or both eyes,
• Trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance, or coordination.
• Severe, sudden headache.

• Thanksgiving 2025 is on Thursday, November 27.
• Many major stores, including Costco, Walmart, and Target, will be closed on Thanksgiving this year.
• However, other major chains will be open under modified hours.

As families across the country gather for Thanksgiving feasts and other celebrations, many major retailers will also be taking the day off.

Big-box stores like Costco, Walmart, and Target all plan to be closed for the holiday, while a few grocery and retail chains will remain open for any last-minute essentials.

Here are 16 major chain stores that will be open on Thanksgiving, as well as 20 that will be closed.

Bass Pro Shops

Number of locations (approximate): 200

Bass Pro Shops will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Big Lots

Number of locations: 219

Big Lots stores will have extended hours from 7 a.m. until midnight.

CVS

Number of locations: 9,000

Most CVS stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Dollar General

Number of locations: 20,700

Most Dollar General stores will be open on Thanksgiving, though hours might vary by location.

Dollar Tree

Number of locations: 9,000 (includes Canadian locations)

Most Dollar Tree locations will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

Family Dollar

Number of locations: 8,000

Family Dollar stores will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Giant Eagle

Number of locations: 470

Giant Eagle stores will be open at their normal time on Thanksgiving Day and will close at 3 p.m. Pharmacies will be closed.

Harris Teeter

Number of locations: 260

Stores will open at 6 a.m. and close by 2 p.m. Pharmacies will be closed.

Kroger

Number of locations: 2,700

Pharmacies will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but stores will be open until 4 p.m.

Ralph's

Number of locations: 182

Ralph's, which is owned by Kroger, will be open on Thanksgiving until 10 p.m., though pharmacies will also be closed.

Safeway

Number of locations: 910

Safeway locations will be open on Thanksgiving, though exact hours vary by location.

Sprouts

Number of locations: 478

Sprouts markets will be open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

Stop & Shop

Number of locations: 365

Stop & Shop stores in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey will be open until 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving, but locations in Massachusetts and Rhode Island will be closed. Pharmacies across the chain will be closed as well.

Walgreens

Number of locations: 8,500

For the third year in a row, Walgreens will close most of its stores on Thanksgiving, but it says 24-hour locations will remain open for essential pharmacy services.

Wegmans

Number of locations: 100

Most Wegmans locations will be open on Thanksgiving day, but stores will close early at 4 p.m. A spokesperson said the company's five Boston-area stores will be closed for the day.

Whole Foods

Number of locations: 530

Whole Foods Markets will open early in the morning on Thanksgiving at 7 a.m., but will close up shop at 1 p.m.

Most major retail chains will be closed on Thanksgiving.

The major chain stores that will be closed on Thanksgiving 2025 are:

1. Aldi
2. Belk
3. Best Buy
4. BJ's Wholesale Club
5. Costco
6. Dick's Sporting Goods
7. Home Depot
8. Ikea
9. Kohl's
10. Lowe's
11. Macy's
12. Nordstrom
13. Publix
14. Sam's Club
15. Sephora
16. Target
17. T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and Sierra
18. Trader Joe's
19. Ulta
20. Walmart

• AI is changing the type of work that consultancies offer — and the expertise they need to do it.
• Mohamed Kande, PwC's global chairman, told the BBC his firm wants to hire more technologists.
• The Big Four firm is struggling to find the talent it wants to hire.

PwC wants to hire more tech talent. There's just one problem — it can't find them.

"Across the PwC network, we are looking for hundreds and hundreds of engineers. We just cannot find them," Mohamed Kande, global chairman of PwC, told the BBC in an interview.

Traditionally, professional services firms have prioritized generalist, critical thinkers, and strong communicators. Now, technologists are in high demand, and top firms have been racing to bolster their ranks with tech talent through a mix of hiring and upskilling.

Accenture's latest annual report shows it added nearly 40,000 AI and data professionals in the last two years. They now account for roughly 10% of its global head count. EY has made an even bigger push, adding 61,000 technologists since 2023.

The new demand for tech capabilities is tied to the changing nature of the work that top consulting firms offer their clients.

McKinsey recently told Business Insider that delivering straight strategy advice — the type of work typically associated with consultants — now only accounts for around 20% of the company's work. Instead, McKinsey is offering more "deep implementation expertise" and multi-year transformation projects.

Kande told the BBC that advising clients on how to implement AI will be at the heart of PwC's future business strategy.

PwC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Kande said he didn't know if PwC would continue hiring graduates at the same rate. "It will be a different set of people. But we are going to make sure we have the right skillset for the right jobs," he told the BBC.

In August, Business Insider obtained part of an internal presentation showing that PwC US planned to cut graduate hiring by a third over the next three years.

A bullet point on the presentation slide said leadership's decision to slow down associate-level hiring related to "transformation efforts, the impact of AI, and further AC integration" — with AC integration referring to PwC's acceleration centers, its name for its offshoring hubs.

The firm told Business Insider at the time that the "rapid pace of technological change" was reshaping its operations, and that it was being "prudent" in response to "historically low levels of attrition."

PwC UK has also reduced its entry-level recruitment in the UK this year, lowering the intake by 200 compared to last year. Marco Amitrano, the UK head, credited the decline in junior hiring to the impact of AI and a sluggish economy.

In 2021, then under the leadership of Bob Mortiz, PwC announced a plan to recruit 100,000 people by the middle of 2026. The firm is roughly 40,000 employees away from hitting that target, according to its latest head count released in October.

"The world looked very different" when those plans were made, Kande told the BBC, adding that meeting the goal was no longer possible

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pthompson@businessinsider.com or Signal at Polly_Thompson.89. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• THC beverage CEOs said new hemp product rules could kill their industry.
• Jack Sherrie, CEO of Delta Beverages, said he's working with others in the industry to save THC-infused drinks.
• Industry leaders are trying to get legislation passed that would legitimize and regulate THC drinks.

CEOs are scrambling to save the THC beverage industry after a newly passed hemp crackdown threatens to wipe out a billion-dollar drink category.

Jack Sherrie, founder and CEO of Delta Beverages, said he's working with competitors and others in the industry to save their companies, many of which are small, founder-led businesses.

"It's funny, we were competing and now we're coming together," Sherrie told Business Insider. "We call it a co-opetition."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with capitalism and competition, but I think that we're definitely going to have to work together as a unit to get something passed," he added. "And we're all very well aware of that."

Delta sells seltzers infused with THC derived from hemp, which was made legal by a provision in the 2018 Farm Bill that allowed for hemp-derived products containing a limited amount of THC.

Under the funding package that reopened the government this month, Congress effectively closed that loophole. The new hemp measure, set to take effect in November 2026, bans products that contain more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. As a result, it would effectively ban many hemp-derived THC products currently on the market, like Delta.

"This quite literally is going to end up killing the hemp industry," Sherrie said, adding that the measure was quietly and suddenly slipped into the bill last minute, taking many in the industry by surprise.

Jake Bullock, CEO of Cann, another THC beverage company, shared similar concerns with Business Insider after the measure was passed, though he said he did not view it as a ban but instead a "one-year shot clock" for the industry to secure legislation it has long needed.

Sherrie and Bullock both said they were optimistic that new legislation could happen. The goal now is to get Congress to pass rules that will regulate the industry and ensure some hemp-derived products can continue being sold.

The CEOs said the restrictions were aimed at highly potent synthetic products, often candies, that are marketed toward kids and sold in accessible places like gas stations, rather than THC drinks, which are generally far less potent.

They also said they believe Congress is open to passing legislation that would legalize and regulate THC beverages, which have grown in popularity, especially among Gen Z, as Americans have cut back on their alcohol consumption.

Sherrie said the industry is working closely with lawmakers to propose a THC beverage bill, hopefully by the end of December.

Meanwhile, it's been a tough time for founders like Sherrie, who said sleep was nonexistent for him during the week the bill made its way through Congress and to President Donald Trump's desk.

"A lot of us are entrepreneurs. We're small businesses. We're not some giant corporation trying to take over the world," he said. "We're trying to thrive, and we're just trying to do our best."

• My husband and I took our 15 and 17-year-old kids to New York City for the first time in a decade.
• Everything on my kids' to-do lists was super touristy, but they loved every moment.
• Being total tourists was a great way to experience the city with our teens, and we'd do it again.

It'd been a decade since my kids visited New York, but given their love of theater and big cities, it wasn't surprising when they recently started asking my husband and me to take them. My family relocated to Florida from Maryland about nine years ago, so trips to NYC aren't as easy as they were when we lived up north. Still, we began researching flights and hotels, and planning a long weekend with our now 15- and 17-year-old kids in the Big Apple.

On our three-night visit to NYC, we acted like tourists, indulging in shows, carriage rides, and bus tours. Embracing our inner tourists turned out to be the perfect way to see New York with our teens for several reasons.

Staying at a hotel in the middle of Manhattan made it easy to get around.

My husband and I visited New York often before we became parents. On those trips, we'd immerse ourselves in less-touristy parts of NYC by staying in spots like Tribeca or Greenwich Village to experience the city like a local.

On this trip, we splurged on a Hilton hotel, The Quin, located right off Central Park. The hotel was a short walk from Times Square and the Broadway shows we wanted to see, and allowed us to explore the city while passing iconic spots like Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall. We walked more than we took ride shares, which allowed for great chats and memory-making with our kids, not to mention my 15-year-old daughter's delight about grabbing Starbucks and walking through Central Park every morning.

Our bus tour was cheesy, but it got us everywhere we wanted to go.

There are numerous hop-on, hop-off bus tour companies in NYC, but we chose Big Bus Tours because it had a stop in Times Square, just a short walk from our hotel. Our tour included 24-hour access to plenty of stops, as well as an audio recording of information about each landmark we passed.

We spent a day shopping in SoHo, exploring Chinatown, and eating at Chelsea Market before hopping on the tour bus one final time to head back to our hotel. Touristy? Definitely. A great way to get a quick lay of the land and see lots of things in NYC? Absolutely, so we have no regrets.

We spent our evenings immersed in Broadway shows.

My teens are both involved in our local community theater scene, so they had a long list of Broadway shows they wanted to see. We planned to spend each night walking from our hotel to dinner, followed by a show, and managed to narrow our selections down to "The Great Gatsby," "Moulin Rouge," and "Chicago."

Getting dressed up for dinner and a show with our teens was incredibly fun, and worth the pricey ticket costs to invest in something that they're both interested in. Seeing shows together gave us something to chat about, and I was delighted that they even obliged me with photos of us all dressed up to go out each evening — a true win for a mom of teenagers.

Letting our kids pick our activities made for some special bonding moments.

Yes, our teens wanted to do touristy things on our trip to New York. While my husband and I prefer to explore more off-the-beaten-path things when we travel, we loved letting them plan our itinerary. Seeing the joy on their faces when they spotted the Statue of Liberty or took photos of the Brooklyn Bridge was pretty special, and it reminded my husband and me not to take these kinds of things, which we've seen many times, for granted.

What's more, following our kids' leads brought special memories to our trip. One in particular? A pricey Central Park carriage ride I took my daughter on one morning during our coffee walk. Yes, it was almost $100 for a 20-minute ride by the time I tipped, but getting that 20 minutes to hear her chatter about how much she loved the city was incredibly special.

We may return to NYC again with our teens next year.

My kids enjoyed our time in New York so much that they asked if we could make it a yearly tradition. Since we visited during the holidays, it was an easy 'yes' for my husband and me, who often prefer to give our kids experiences rather than things at Christmastime.

As we left the city, headed for the airport, I opened the notes app on my phone and asked them what they'd want to do next year in NYC. A ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty and a trip to the top of the Empire State Building were new to their list, and some returning favorites like shows on Broadway and a horse-drawn carriage ride also reappeared. If another touristy NYC trip is in our future next year, I'm OK with that. After all, it was the perfect way to spend a long weekend bonding with our kids.

• Salesforce's CEO says he's ditching ChatGPT for Google's Gemini 3, calling the leap "insane."
• Tech leaders, including Sam Altman and Andrej Karpathy, have praised Gemini 3's early performance.
• Gemini 3's launch cements Google's push to reclaim the AI crown from OpenAI.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he's ditching OpenAI's ChatGPT for Google's newest AI model, Gemini 3 — calling it an "insane" leap forward in reasoning, speed, and multimodal capabilities.

"Holy shit," Benioff wrote on X on Sunday. "I've used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I'm not going back. The leap is insane — reasoning, speed, images, video… everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed, again."

Benioff's reaction quickly went viral, racking up more than one million views as of early Monday morning. It adds to a growing chorus of executives praising Google's latest AI release.

Executives are lining up behind Gemini 3

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, Google's biggest rival in the AI race, congratulated the company on Gemini 3's launch, posting on X last week: "Looks like a great model."

Former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy said on X he had a "positive early impression" of Gemini 3, calling it "very solid daily driver potential" and "clearly a tier 1 LLM."

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison also weighed in, posting on X that Gemini 3 built an "interactive web page summarizing 10 breakthroughs in genetics," which he called "pretty cool."

Google and its DeepMind division unveiled Gemini 3 last week, describing it in a blog post as their "most powerful agentic and vibe coding model yet," capable of generating and understanding text, images, video, and code with tighter integration across the Google ecosystem.

The AI arms race is heating up

Benioff's endorsement is striking, given Salesforce's deep partnerships across the AI landscape — including those with OpenAI and Anthropic — and underscores how rapidly preferences among top tech leaders are shifting as models get faster and better.

Google's Gemini 3 arrives amid intensifying competition from OpenAI's ChatGPT 4.5 Turbo and 5, as well as Anthropic's Claude 3.5, each pushing boundaries in reasoning and tool use.

• Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke joins Apiiro as a strategic advisor.
• Apiiro helps organizations monitor and secure AI-generated software code and codebases.
• Dohmke aims to enhance protections as AI coding tools increase cybersecurity risks for companies.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke stepped down a few months ago. He's getting back into the arena now.

Dohmke was just tapped as a strategic advisor to Apiiro, a startup that helps organizations monitor the security of their apps and codebases.

He'll focus on helping Apiiro develop new protections for AI-generated software code.

As more AI coding tools churn out code, there's concern that this could make codebases more vulnerable to hacks and other cybersecurity risks.

Dohmke said developers now often use multiple AI coding agents, and these tools don't necessarily know all the policies, rules, and safeguards that their employers have set up to ensure their codebases and broader technology offerings are secure.

Apiiro's technology connects with companies' code-management systems, providing this crucial context for AI code generation, he said.

"That's the important part," Dohmke added, adding that Apiiro can spot and automatically fix such issues in code, helping developers comply with company guidelines, while not piling on more work for them to do.

Apiiro has raised more than $100 million from investors, including General Catalyst, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins. CEO Idan Plotnik has launched and sold other startups in the past and has served as a cybersecurity executive at Microsoft.

Dohmke also comes from Microsoft, which owns GitHub. He said he met Plotnik about three years ago and was taken by the CEO's energy and Apiiro's mission.

Of course, the former head of GitHub has a lot of choices for what to do next. And while Dohmke gets a portion of Apiiro for his advisory services, he said he's more interested in what Apiiro is building.

As more employees use AI to develop digital products and prototypes, the startup's technology should become even more useful, he said.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Technologists who specialize in AI are now Wall Street's most in-demand workers.
• The scramble is fueling a talent war with Big Tech and other sectors.
• Recruiters explain what banks and asset managers are offering to lure them.

The hottest job on Wall Street right now isn't a trader or dealmaker. It belongs to the human minds who specialize in building the digital ones.

Bank chiefs have been touting how adopting artificial intelligence at scale will help employees work smarter and cut costs, and they're putting serious money behind those AI ambitions. Goldman Sachs' CEO David Solomon said in October that he wished the firm's $6 billion annual tech budget was even higher, while Bank of America dedicated $4 billion this year to "new technology initiatives," according to the company.

A chunk of that investment is directed at building out battalions of tech professionals to realize those strategies. However, the demand for that talent is driving salaries for technologists who specialize in AI — from rank-and-file engineers to executive and C-suite tech strategists — to soar at banks, according to insiders.

"There's certainly not enough people" to keep pace with hiring demand, said recruiter Ryan Bulkoski, the global head of the AI, data, and analytics practice at the search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

Recruiters and executives across financial services companies told Business Insider the result is a full-blown talent war pitting Wall Street banks against hedge funds, private asset managers, and Silicon Valley startups.

The senior-level or C-suite AI leader who can steer corporate strategy "is the hottest job in the market" right now, forcing financial services firms to cough up "stretch offers," Chris Connors, a principal at the compensation consultancy Johnson Associates, told Business Insider.

"If you are a high-caliber talent, you are more desirable than virtually every other role in the market," Connors added, noting that some firms have extended special, non-standard awards to lure top-tier talent or prevent them from leaving. Competition across the industry is fierce, as hedge funds and other asset managers have even issued incremental equity or long-term awards, Connors said — they often range from $500,000 to $1 million, typically vesting across three to four years. Some firms have offered "significant upfront sign-on grants," often in excess of $200,000, delivered off the bat as cash or equity, he said.

For banks, especially, it has created a conundrum — how to extend big-ticket offers while adhering to their often rigid, standardized compensation bands. Hiring managers are forking over "some uncomfortable hiring packages" which are vaulting recipients into "a completely different stratosphere," Bulkoski explained, noting that top compensation packages for senior-level AI leaders are reaching the high seven- and even eight-figure range.

"Nobody's leaving for less than 30%" pay increases if they're coming from companies where they're already "heads-down and doing well," he said. "No one's going to move for the historical 10, 15, or even 20% bump in compensation."

Making money moves

AI hiring in the financial services industry grew in 2025 to 10 times its level at the start of January 2022, according to an analysis by workforce data provider Revelio Labs. To assemble the data, Revelio examined finance job postings for roles like "AI engineer," "machine learning engineer," and "computer vision engineer," among others.

Six of the largest US banks — including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — have collectively posted more than 2,000 AI roles in the past 12 months, Revelio's data showed.

That surging demand for AI talent is driving paychecks higher.

The average salary for AI professionals in finance, excluding C-suite roles, had risen to about $180,000 from $142,000 in 2020. That increase of more than 25% puts them on par with what conventional tech firms tend to pay for these roles, Revelio said.

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment, while others did not respond to requests for comment.

"What we have seen with banks over the past few years is they've had to really reframe and reimagine those comp ranges, especially for a lot of this type of talent," Ben Hodzic, head of North America at the recruiting firm Selby Jennings, told Business Insider. That's especially true as they're coming up against multistrategy hedge funds and high-frequency systematic trading firms that are "paying whatever they need to pay to get people," he said.

Seat at the table

But money alone isn't enough, insiders said. These technologists also want something else: power.

Insiders said the AI race has elevated the voices of technology chiefs at banks and asset managers, giving them a perch at powerful tables that steer firms' overall strategy. Bulkoski said that, for prospective AI chiefs, wielding greater levels of influence in the boardroom alongside other C-suite leaders is an appealing prospect unto itself. "It could trump another number on the sheet," he said.

The nature of the work is attracting a broad swathe of professionals eager to exploit the breach. "Go on LinkedIn and look at the number of people who just changed their title from data scientist to AI scientist," Bulkoski said. "It's kind of unbelievable."

Candidates for senior-level roles are skewing younger, he continued. Some AI-savvy talent in their early- to mid-20s are pulling high-six to seven-figure offers, he said. To suss out who is a fit and who isn't, Bulkoski said his team assesses "whether they have a real track record" of constructing original AI or machine learning products at scale, and if they can channel that knowledge into creating commercial or operational value.

"Most are in the early phases of developing executive maturity," he said, "but the best of them can already influence senior leaders by grounding every conversation in architecture, data, and measurable impact."

The ladder up

With access to the board and stepped-up influence and responsibility, some Wall Street insiders are betting they can offer something Big Tech companies generally can't: a steadier, more clearly defined climb up the professional ranks.

With tech firms consolidating and fears of an AI bubble mounting, recruiters say some technologists are increasingly drawn to the stability and hierarchy that the financial services industry is known for.

"There's been a lot less volatility with jobs in the finance industry compared to the tech industry," said Selby Jennings' Hodzic, adding that finance offers a more well-worn, clearly defined pathway. He said Wall Street had been insulated from the kind of mass layoffs that have roiled Big Tech. Amazon, for instance, cut about 14,000 corporate jobs in 2025.

Recruiters say the flames fanning the talent war aren't dissipating anytime soon, and that the next phase of the hiring race is already underway.

"In 2025, it's almost like Gen AI is in the past," Bulkoski said. "We're actually now working on searches that have 'agentic AI' in the title."

• Bobbi Brown said she believes that too many managerial layers in a company are 'dumb.'
• In WSJ's CMO Council Summit, she rejected the concept of layers and excess consultants.
• Jones Road Beauty reflects Brown's focus on simplicity, efficiency, and founder-led decision-making.

For Bobbi Brown, one of the perks of starting over after leaving her namesake brand was being "freed" from the constraints of a large corporation.

The beauty founder said she learned a valuable lesson from that experience: "Layers are dumb."

"The most important thing is I learned what not to do," Brown said at The Wall Street Journal's CMO Council Summit on Wednesday. "Not to waste time, energy, money."

When Brown launched her namesake brand in 1991, she was 34 years old and handled every aspect of the company.

"I used to interview every single person in the beginning. Every single person," Brown said on a recent "Master of Scale" podcast episode discussing the release of her recent memoir, "Still Bobbi."

In the years after she sold her company to Estée Lauder and signed a 25-year non-compete with the beauty conglomerate, that dynamic started to change, and toward the end of her time at the company, the brand became "very process-oriented." Brown described becoming increasingly excluded from hiring decisions as the company expanded.

Estée Lauder did not reply to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Consultants and KPIs

Part of Brown's lesson to not waste resources and energy is to "not hire a lot of consultants," she said at the WSJ CMO Council Summit.

When she founded her new company, Jones Road Beauty, she said she stripped away unnecessary layers. The founder said she's "narrow-minded with what needs to get done," but loves hearing others' opinions.

She also said she doesn't understand why traditional corporate measures of metrics, like key performance indicators, or KPIs, are needed to assess performance.

"You either did a good job and sales are good, or you did a bad job," Brown said.

Brown isn't the only leader who has expressed frustrations with corporate bureaucracy in recent years. After a spike in hiring during the pandemic, many Big Tech companies have spent the last few years cutting back staffing, trimming middle management, and flattening organizational layers.

Brown said at the WSJ CMO Council Summit that she's maintained the same entrepreneurial ethos she had as an early founder and that she's still the "same Bobbi" who was cold-calling from the Yellow Pages.

"I love being scrappy," she said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jenny Wood, a 45-year-old former Google executive who lives in Boulder, Colorado. She left Google in August 2024 and is now a keynote speaker, coach, and author. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

It seemed preposterous for me to ever think about leaving Google.

I started there in November 2006, when there were only around 10,000 employees, and became an executive — the director of American media relations — in 2022.

Google's amazing; I bleed Google colors. I loved the impact I was having, the future of opportunities I saw for myself, and the feedback I was getting as a leader. I'm also the breadwinner for my family.

I'd always thought I'd be at Google for another 15 years and would retire there.

I realized I couldn't sustain my life anymore

The moment that started the agony was when I was driving my son, who was 7 at the time, home from choir rehearsal in the dark, a 45-minute drive on winding roads.

Because of everything on my plate at the time — my role at Google, leading the Own Your Career program, navigating my book opportunities, and being a wife and mom — I was suffering from so much anxiety that it kept me up at night, feeling like I was letting everybody down and not doing anything well.

Mostly, I was incredibly sleep-deprived.

As I was driving, I was like, Oh my gosh. Did my eyes just flutter closed? I didn't actually fall asleep at the wheel, but it was a terrifying moment.

During my next session with my executive coach, I told her I couldn't sustain this anymore. I had taken on so many things in the name of success. She said, "Jenny, circumstances change."

Her words stopped me in my tracks and opened me up to the possibility of leaving — leaving well and quitting thoughtfully.

Thus ensued 18 months of back-and-forth about whether I should stay or go.

I used a spreadsheet to help me weigh the risks

I'm a left-brain thinker and approach the world in a very analytical way, so it was hard to feel in my gut that it was time to leave.

One thing that really helped was a spreadsheet I made, weighing actual risk against perceived risk. I broke it down into four components: physical risk, cognitive risk, emotional risk, and financial risk.

Physical risk included things like not sleeping at night, pain, and weight loss (which I gave a 1). Cognitive risk was mental stress, distraction, and mental drain (a 2). Emotional risk included potential for rejection, loss of connection with loved ones, negative self-talk, and fear (a 2). And the financial risk was things like paying my future mortgage statement and future earnings potential (a 2).

Breaking things down helped me get out of a catastrophizing mindset of thinking, This is a ridiculous idea, and made me think much more practically about how this might be possible.

I had to change my mindset to escape the golden handcuffs

The golden handcuffs are very real.

It wasn't just my salary, bonus, and equity; it was all of that future income as well. I would log in to my Google stock portfolio system — which tells you what you've earned and what you'll earn when your stock vests — and my palms would sweat. It was really hard to walk away from that number.

But ultimately, if you're in an executive role at any Fortune 500 company, you're probably making more than you need to live on. I guess it depends on your lifestyle; I live pretty frugally. Even so, I still couldn't imagine my income and net assets not continuing to go up and to the right every single year until I retired.

That was a mindset I had to move past.

It took my husband and me having seven conversations with our financial advisor — which ended up being more like therapy — for me to feel comfortable and confident that I could do this.

My advice on quitting well

I ended up leaving Google in August 2024. I cried after I turned in my badge and computer and as I drove away — happy, sad, and bittersweet tears. It was 18 years of my life!

When I came home, my husband and kids had written all these phrases that I'd said before through my leadership and coaching work, and arranged them in a heart shape on the window in the kitchen.

The heart is still up, 14 months later.

Quitting Google has been a massive change. I don't want to make it sound like it was easy; it was the scariest and hardest thing I've ever gone through in my professional life.

But I'd say I quit extraordinarily well. Here's my advice for others.

1. Mind your truths and tales

A truth is a verifiable fact, while a tale is a story you create to make sense around the facts. We often tell ourselves negative tales, and they don't serve us well because we believe what we think.

To get past my fears, I had to separate the truths from the tales, and then rewrite those tales to be more empowering.

For example:

Tale: I will lose my entire identity if I leave Google.

Truth: I'll no longer be employed by Google.

A more empowering tale: Part of the reason I'm leaving is because I want to have a huge book launch and possibly be a bestselling author. That's an incredible new identity to adopt!

Or, tale: We will run out of money and have to move to a smaller house, away from the gorgeous hiking trails that are behind our current house.

Truth: I will not get a paycheck with the Google logo on it every two weeks.

A more empowering tale: I've worked really hard to put myself in the best financial position possible to make this a reality.

One tale I told myself was that my kids would never forgive me for leaving Google because they love the secret game room, the climbing wall, and the free snacks and candy — Google's a really cool place for a parent to work. But I know they're really proud of what I'm doing.

What matters more to them is that now I'm done with work every day at 2:40 p.m., I drop them off and pick them up from school almost every day, and they're probably going to start traveling to places like Disney World and Vegas with me for keynotes now.

There's no question this was the right decision for my family.

2. Prioritize your dynamic dozen

Before I quit, I made a spreadsheet on my personal computer of people I wanted to stay in touch with and their email addresses. I was also posting on LinkedIn frequently and building an audience.

I set up what I call the "dynamic dozen" — 12 people you want to meet with in the next 12 weeks. This is great if you're trying to switch roles within your company, if you're looking for a new job, and also if you want to quit. It could be 12 people in 12 weeks, or 30 people in 30 days.

Mine was probably closer to around 60 people in 60 days, because I wanted to leverage all of the relationships I had: people who might want to bring me as a keynote speaker in the future, or people who might want to buy a hundred bulk copies of my book two years from then.

When you leave a company, your network always remains, so double down on that before you peace out. Have honest, intentional conversations, put time on someone's calendar, and reach out to people, even if it's been years since you had a working relationship.

I had to push past the fear that no one at Google would want to work with me once I was on the outside, that I'd be irrelevant. My work is a lot about how to thrive in a corporate environment, so I wondered, If I'm no longer in one, will any of my content still be valid?

Now, my number one client is Google. The vast majority of my coaching clients are Google employees, and a huge chunk of my speaking revenue is from Google speaking engagements or consulting.

3. Move, then map

Once, I was hiking in Montana with two friends, and the trail diverged into two paths. I'm always trying to optimize, so I started peppering the park ranger with all of these questions: "What is the perfect path? Which one will be more cardio? Which one is a lake view and which is a mountain view? Which trail is muddy?"

And from 50 feet ahead, my friend yelled, "Jenny, it's all beautiful! Just start walking!"

I'm always trying to map out everything perfectly — how much income I'd make, how quickly I could build a business, what I'd be if not a Googler.

You can't do that. Fear adds friction, which slows you down without actually minimizing risk.

Trying to map every little possible component also takes the joy out of the process. Action makes progress; thinking provides clarity. When you move and then map —or at least move and map in tandem — you're going to be set up for so much more success.

If you quit your job for an unconventional path and want to share your story, please reach out to this reporter at janezhang@businessinsider.com.